II. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery<\/span><\/h1>\r\nLed by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city\u2019s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond\u2019s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.\r\n\r\nGabriel\u2019s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia\u2019s white residents several lessons. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution\u2014undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts\u2014especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti\u2014had failed. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia\u2019s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.\r\n\r\nThe Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal<\/em> that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the \u201cglory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants\u201d and said that Haitians, \u201caccording to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.\u201d Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people.[footnote]David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 21, 56.[\/footnote]\u00a0 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, \u201cHaytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.\u201d[footnote]John Russwurm, \u201cThe Condition and Prospects of Hayti,\u201d in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, ed. Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 168.[\/footnote]\u00a0In 1838 the Colored American<\/em>, an early Black newspaper, professed that \u201cno one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.\u201d[footnote]\u201cRepublic of Hayti,\u201d Colored American, March 15, 1838, 2.[\/footnote] Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions\u2014on plantations, streets, and the printed page\u2014left an indelible mark on early national political culture.\r\n\r\nThe Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_401\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"718\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.2-300x241.jpg\")
The idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white soldier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodolski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHenry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[footnote]Benjamin Rush, \u201cObservations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,\u201d Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289\u2013297.[\/footnote] Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.\r\n\r\nThe first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.\r\n\r\nInformed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.\r\n\r\nJefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[footnote]Banneker to Jefferson, August 19, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/01-22-02-0049<\/a>.[\/footnote] \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.\r\n\r\nJefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.\r\nIII. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\r\nFree and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[footnote]Fisher Ames, \u201cThe Mire of a Democracy,\u201d in W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), Vol. 1: 6, 7.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIndeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[footnote]Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950\u2013), Vol. 2: 183. Hereafter cited as PTJ, RS.[\/footnote] Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[footnote]Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/jefferson\/137.html<\/a>.[\/footnote] Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.\r\n\r\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.\r\n\r\nDemocratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.\r\n\r\nThe celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[footnote]Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 22 vols. to date (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976\u2013), Vol. 13: 126\u2013127. The digital edition of the first twenty volumes is available through the University of Virginia Press Rotunda project, edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., http:\/\/rotunda.upress.virginia.edu\/founders\/RNCN.htm<\/a>l. Hereafter cited as DHRC.[\/footnote] American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_402\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"851\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.3-300x176.jpg\")
The artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[footnote]Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799.[\/footnote] Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[footnote]See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).[\/footnote]\r\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_403\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"666\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.4-300x244.jpg\")
Thomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.\r\n\r\nJefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[footnote]Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[footnote]Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. [\/footnote] Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.\r\n\r\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_404\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"758\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.5-300x154.jpg\")
The attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[footnote]For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).[\/footnote] Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[footnote]Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802.[\/footnote] Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[footnote]The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.\r\nV. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\r\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[footnote]See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111.[\/footnote] Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.\r\n\r\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.\r\n\r\nIn the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_405\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"517\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.6-231x300.jpg\")
Shown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.\r\n\r\nNative diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[footnote]Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33.[\/footnote] Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.\r\n\r\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_406\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.7-300x197.jpg\")
Tenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.\r\n\r\nWhile Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[footnote]Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[footnote]Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153.[\/footnote] With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[footnote]Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309.[\/footnote] Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.\r\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\r\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.\r\n\r\nThe War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.\r\n\r\nImpressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.\r\n\r\nIn 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[footnote]Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187.[\/footnote] Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.\r\n\r\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.\r\n\r\nRepublicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[footnote]Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[footnote]Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8.[\/footnote] This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.\r\n\r\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.\r\n\r\nWhile the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.\r\n\r\nDuring the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_407\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"694\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.8-300x210.jpg\")
As pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.\r\n\r\nWith Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[footnote]\u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138.[\/footnote] Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.\r\n\r\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.\r\n\r\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d\r\n\r\nImpressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_408\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"578\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.9-300x206.jpg\")
The artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_409\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"743\"]![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.10-300x206.jpg\")
Contemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.\r\n\r\nThe Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[footnote]Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. [\/footnote] In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.\r\n\r\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[footnote]Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69.[\/footnote] Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.\r\n\r\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[footnote]Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130.[\/footnote] He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.\r\n\r\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.\r\n\r\nWhat may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[footnote]Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11.[\/footnote] As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.\r\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\r\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.","rendered":"![\"\"](\"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/229\/2025\/04\/7.1-300x175.jpg\")
\u201cAmerica guided by wisdom An allegorical representation of the United States depicting their independence and prosperity,\u201d 1815. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI. Introduction<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s electoral victory over John Adams\u2014and the larger victory of the Democratic-Republicans over the Federalists\u2014was but one of many changes in the early republic. Some, like Jefferson\u2019s victory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. The wealthy and the powerful, middling and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, influential and poor women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an \u201casylum\u201d for liberty.[1]<\/sup><\/a> All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by the Revolution.<\/p>\nII. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery<\/span><\/h1>\nLed by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city\u2019s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond\u2019s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.<\/p>\n
Gabriel\u2019s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia\u2019s white residents several lessons. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution\u2014undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts\u2014especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti\u2014had failed. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia\u2019s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.<\/p>\n
The Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal<\/em> that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the \u201cglory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants\u201d and said that Haitians, \u201caccording to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.\u201d Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, \u201cHaytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In 1838 the Colored American<\/em>, an early Black newspaper, professed that \u201cno one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions\u2014on plantations, streets, and the printed page\u2014left an indelible mark on early national political culture.<\/p>\nThe Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white soldier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodolski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHenry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.<\/p>\nThe first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.<\/p>\n
Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.<\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.<\/p>\nJefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.<\/p>\n
III. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\nFree and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIndeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[8]<\/sup><\/a> Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.<\/p>\n
Democratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.<\/p>\n
The celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.<\/p>\n
Jefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.<\/p>\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.<\/p>\n
V. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[18]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.<\/p>\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nShown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.<\/p>\n
Native diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.<\/p>\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nTenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.<\/p>\n
While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[21]<\/sup><\/a> With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a> Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.<\/p>\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.<\/p>\n
The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.<\/p>\n
Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.<\/p>\n
In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.<\/p>\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.<\/p>\n
Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.<\/p>\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.<\/p>\n
While the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAs pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n
With Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.<\/p>\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.<\/p>\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nContemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.<\/p>\n
The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[27]<\/sup><\/a> In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.<\/p>\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.<\/p>\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[29]<\/sup><\/a> He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.<\/p>\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.<\/p>\n
What may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a> As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.<\/p>\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.<\/p>\n
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), in Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), 23. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 21, 56. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- John Russwurm, \u201cThe Condition and Prospects of Hayti,\u201d in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, ed. Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 168. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cRepublic of Hayti,\u201d Colored American, March 15, 1838, 2. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Benjamin Rush, \u201cObservations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,\u201d Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289\u2013297. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Banneker to Jefferson, August 19, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/01-22-02-0049<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Fisher Ames, \u201cThe Mire of a Democracy,\u201d in W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), Vol. 1: 6, 7. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950\u2013), Vol. 2: 183. Hereafter cited as PTJ, RS. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/jefferson\/137.html<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 22 vols. to date (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976\u2013), Vol. 13: 126\u2013127. The digital edition of the first twenty volumes is available through the University of Virginia Press Rotunda project, edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., http:\/\/rotunda.upress.virginia.edu\/founders\/RNCN.htm<\/a>l. Hereafter cited as DHRC. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":158,"menu_order":7,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-399","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions\/651"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[footnote]Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799.[\/footnote] Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[footnote]See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006).[\/footnote]\r\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_403\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"666\"] Thomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.\r\n\r\nJefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[footnote]Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[footnote]Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. [\/footnote] Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.\r\n\r\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_404\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"758\"] The attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[footnote]For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997).[\/footnote] Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[footnote]Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802.[\/footnote] Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[footnote]The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.\r\nV. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\r\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[footnote]See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111.[\/footnote] Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.\r\n\r\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.\r\n\r\nIn the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_405\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"517\"] Shown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.\r\n\r\nNative diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[footnote]Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33.[\/footnote] Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.\r\n\r\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_406\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"] Tenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.\r\n\r\nWhile Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[footnote]Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[footnote]Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153.[\/footnote] With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[footnote]Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309.[\/footnote] Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.\r\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\r\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.\r\n\r\nThe War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.\r\n\r\nImpressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.\r\n\r\nIn 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[footnote]Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187.[\/footnote] Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.\r\n\r\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.\r\n\r\nRepublicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[footnote]Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[footnote]Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8.[\/footnote] This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.\r\n\r\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.\r\n\r\nWhile the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.\r\n\r\nDuring the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_407\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"694\"] As pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.\r\n\r\nWith Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[footnote]\u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138.[\/footnote] Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.\r\n\r\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.\r\n\r\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d\r\n\r\nImpressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_408\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"578\"] The artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_409\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"743\"] Contemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.\r\n\r\nThe Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[footnote]Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. [\/footnote] In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.\r\n\r\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[footnote]Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69.[\/footnote] Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.\r\n\r\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[footnote]Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130.[\/footnote] He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.\r\n\r\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.\r\n\r\nWhat may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[footnote]Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11.[\/footnote] As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.\r\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\r\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.","rendered":"\u201cAmerica guided by wisdom An allegorical representation of the United States depicting their independence and prosperity,\u201d 1815. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI. Introduction<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s electoral victory over John Adams\u2014and the larger victory of the Democratic-Republicans over the Federalists\u2014was but one of many changes in the early republic. Some, like Jefferson\u2019s victory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. The wealthy and the powerful, middling and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, influential and poor women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an \u201casylum\u201d for liberty.[1]<\/sup><\/a> All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by the Revolution.<\/p>\nII. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery<\/span><\/h1>\nLed by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city\u2019s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond\u2019s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.<\/p>\n
Gabriel\u2019s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia\u2019s white residents several lessons. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution\u2014undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts\u2014especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti\u2014had failed. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia\u2019s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.<\/p>\n
The Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal<\/em> that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the \u201cglory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants\u201d and said that Haitians, \u201caccording to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.\u201d Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, \u201cHaytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In 1838 the Colored American<\/em>, an early Black newspaper, professed that \u201cno one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions\u2014on plantations, streets, and the printed page\u2014left an indelible mark on early national political culture.<\/p>\nThe Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white soldier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodolski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHenry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.<\/p>\nThe first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.<\/p>\n
Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.<\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.<\/p>\nJefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.<\/p>\n
III. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\nFree and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIndeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[8]<\/sup><\/a> Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.<\/p>\n
Democratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.<\/p>\n
The celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.<\/p>\n
Jefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.<\/p>\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.<\/p>\n
V. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[18]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.<\/p>\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nShown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.<\/p>\n
Native diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.<\/p>\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nTenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.<\/p>\n
While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[21]<\/sup><\/a> With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a> Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.<\/p>\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.<\/p>\n
The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.<\/p>\n
Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.<\/p>\n
In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.<\/p>\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.<\/p>\n
Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.<\/p>\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.<\/p>\n
While the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAs pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n
With Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.<\/p>\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.<\/p>\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nContemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.<\/p>\n
The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[27]<\/sup><\/a> In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.<\/p>\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.<\/p>\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[29]<\/sup><\/a> He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.<\/p>\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.<\/p>\n
What may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a> As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.<\/p>\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.<\/p>\n
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), in Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), 23. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 21, 56. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- John Russwurm, \u201cThe Condition and Prospects of Hayti,\u201d in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, ed. Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 168. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cRepublic of Hayti,\u201d Colored American, March 15, 1838, 2. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Benjamin Rush, \u201cObservations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,\u201d Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289\u2013297. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Banneker to Jefferson, August 19, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/01-22-02-0049<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Fisher Ames, \u201cThe Mire of a Democracy,\u201d in W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), Vol. 1: 6, 7. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950\u2013), Vol. 2: 183. Hereafter cited as PTJ, RS. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/jefferson\/137.html<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 22 vols. to date (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976\u2013), Vol. 13: 126\u2013127. The digital edition of the first twenty volumes is available through the University of Virginia Press Rotunda project, edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., http:\/\/rotunda.upress.virginia.edu\/founders\/RNCN.htm<\/a>l. Hereafter cited as DHRC. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":158,"menu_order":7,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-399","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions\/651"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Shown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.\r\n\r\nNative diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[footnote]Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33.[\/footnote] Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.\r\n\r\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.\r\n\r\nTecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_406\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"] Tenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.\r\n\r\nWhile Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.\r\n\r\nAdditionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[footnote]Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009).[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[footnote]Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153.[\/footnote] With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[footnote]Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309.[\/footnote] Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.\r\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\r\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.\r\n\r\nThe War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.\r\n\r\nImpressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.\r\n\r\nIn 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[footnote]Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187.[\/footnote] Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.\r\n\r\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.\r\n\r\nRepublicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[footnote]Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[footnote]Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8.[\/footnote] This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.\r\n\r\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.\r\n\r\nWhile the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.\r\n\r\nDuring the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_407\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"694\"] As pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.\r\n\r\nWith Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[footnote]\u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138.[\/footnote] Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.\r\n\r\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.\r\n\r\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d\r\n\r\nImpressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_408\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"578\"] The artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_409\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"743\"] Contemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.\r\n\r\nThe Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[footnote]Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. [\/footnote] In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.\r\n\r\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[footnote]Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69.[\/footnote] Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.\r\n\r\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[footnote]Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130.[\/footnote] He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.\r\n\r\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.\r\n\r\nWhat may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[footnote]Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11.[\/footnote] As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.\r\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\r\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.","rendered":"\u201cAmerica guided by wisdom An allegorical representation of the United States depicting their independence and prosperity,\u201d 1815. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nI. Introduction<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s electoral victory over John Adams\u2014and the larger victory of the Democratic-Republicans over the Federalists\u2014was but one of many changes in the early republic. Some, like Jefferson\u2019s victory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. The wealthy and the powerful, middling and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, influential and poor women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an \u201casylum\u201d for liberty.[1]<\/sup><\/a> All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by the Revolution.<\/p>\nII. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery<\/span><\/h1>\nLed by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city\u2019s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond\u2019s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.<\/p>\n
Gabriel\u2019s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia\u2019s white residents several lessons. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution\u2014undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts\u2014especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti\u2014had failed. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia\u2019s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.<\/p>\n
The Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal<\/em> that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the \u201cglory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants\u201d and said that Haitians, \u201caccording to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.\u201d Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, \u201cHaytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In 1838 the Colored American<\/em>, an early Black newspaper, professed that \u201cno one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions\u2014on plantations, streets, and the printed page\u2014left an indelible mark on early national political culture.<\/p>\nThe Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white soldier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodolski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHenry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.<\/p>\nThe first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.<\/p>\n
Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.<\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.<\/p>\nJefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.<\/p>\n
III. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\nFree and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIndeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[8]<\/sup><\/a> Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.<\/p>\n
Democratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.<\/p>\n
The celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.<\/p>\n
Jefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.<\/p>\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.<\/p>\n
V. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[18]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.<\/p>\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nShown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.<\/p>\n
Native diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.<\/p>\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nTenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.<\/p>\n
While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[21]<\/sup><\/a> With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a> Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.<\/p>\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.<\/p>\n
The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.<\/p>\n
Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.<\/p>\n
In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.<\/p>\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.<\/p>\n
Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.<\/p>\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.<\/p>\n
While the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAs pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n
With Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.<\/p>\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.<\/p>\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nContemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.<\/p>\n
The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[27]<\/sup><\/a> In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.<\/p>\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.<\/p>\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[29]<\/sup><\/a> He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.<\/p>\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.<\/p>\n
What may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a> As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.<\/p>\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.<\/p>\n
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), in Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), 23. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 21, 56. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- John Russwurm, \u201cThe Condition and Prospects of Hayti,\u201d in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, ed. Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 168. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cRepublic of Hayti,\u201d Colored American, March 15, 1838, 2. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Benjamin Rush, \u201cObservations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,\u201d Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289\u2013297. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Banneker to Jefferson, August 19, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/01-22-02-0049<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Fisher Ames, \u201cThe Mire of a Democracy,\u201d in W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), Vol. 1: 6, 7. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950\u2013), Vol. 2: 183. Hereafter cited as PTJ, RS. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/jefferson\/137.html<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 22 vols. to date (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976\u2013), Vol. 13: 126\u2013127. The digital edition of the first twenty volumes is available through the University of Virginia Press Rotunda project, edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., http:\/\/rotunda.upress.virginia.edu\/founders\/RNCN.htm<\/a>l. Hereafter cited as DHRC. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":158,"menu_order":7,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-399","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions\/651"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I. Introduction<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s electoral victory over John Adams\u2014and the larger victory of the Democratic-Republicans over the Federalists\u2014was but one of many changes in the early republic. Some, like Jefferson\u2019s victory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. The wealthy and the powerful, middling and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, influential and poor women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an \u201casylum\u201d for liberty.[1]<\/sup><\/a> All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by the Revolution.<\/p>\nII. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery<\/span><\/h1>\nLed by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city\u2019s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond\u2019s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.<\/p>\n
Gabriel\u2019s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia\u2019s white residents several lessons. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution\u2014undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts\u2014especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti\u2014had failed. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia\u2019s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.<\/p>\n
The Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal<\/em> that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the \u201cglory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants\u201d and said that Haitians, \u201caccording to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.\u201d Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, \u201cHaytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In 1838 the Colored American<\/em>, an early Black newspaper, professed that \u201cno one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions\u2014on plantations, streets, and the printed page\u2014left an indelible mark on early national political culture.<\/p>\nThe Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white soldier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodolski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHenry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.<\/p>\nThe first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.<\/p>\n
Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.<\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.<\/p>\nJefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.<\/p>\n
III. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\nFree and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIndeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[8]<\/sup><\/a> Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.<\/p>\n
Democratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.<\/p>\n
The celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.<\/p>\n
Jefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.<\/p>\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.<\/p>\n
V. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[18]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.<\/p>\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nShown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.<\/p>\n
Native diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.<\/p>\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nTenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.<\/p>\n
While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[21]<\/sup><\/a> With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a> Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.<\/p>\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.<\/p>\n
The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.<\/p>\n
Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.<\/p>\n
In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.<\/p>\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.<\/p>\n
Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.<\/p>\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.<\/p>\n
While the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAs pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n
With Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.<\/p>\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.<\/p>\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nContemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.<\/p>\n
The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[27]<\/sup><\/a> In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.<\/p>\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.<\/p>\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[29]<\/sup><\/a> He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.<\/p>\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.<\/p>\n
What may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a> As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.<\/p>\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.<\/p>\n
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), in Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), 23. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 21, 56. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- John Russwurm, \u201cThe Condition and Prospects of Hayti,\u201d in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, ed. Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 168. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cRepublic of Hayti,\u201d Colored American, March 15, 1838, 2. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Benjamin Rush, \u201cObservations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,\u201d Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289\u2013297. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Banneker to Jefferson, August 19, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/01-22-02-0049<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Fisher Ames, \u201cThe Mire of a Democracy,\u201d in W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), Vol. 1: 6, 7. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950\u2013), Vol. 2: 183. Hereafter cited as PTJ, RS. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/jefferson\/137.html<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 22 vols. to date (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976\u2013), Vol. 13: 126\u2013127. The digital edition of the first twenty volumes is available through the University of Virginia Press Rotunda project, edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., http:\/\/rotunda.upress.virginia.edu\/founders\/RNCN.htm<\/a>l. Hereafter cited as DHRC. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":158,"menu_order":7,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-399","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions\/651"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
II. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery<\/span><\/h1>\nLed by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Virginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary fires in the city\u2019s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond\u2019s white residents, seize weapons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the plot to their enslaver, who notified authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture the conspirators. After briefly escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-five others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery. Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.<\/p>\n
Gabriel\u2019s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia\u2019s white residents several lessons. First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophisticated and violent revolution\u2014undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white efforts to suppress news of other slave revolts\u2014especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti\u2014had failed. Not only did some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia\u2019s newspapers, but others also heard about the rebellion firsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Virginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.<\/p>\n
The Haitian Revolution (1791\u20131804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terrified white Americans. Port cities in the United States were flooded with news and refugees. Free people of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citizenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal<\/em> that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker called Haiti the \u201cglory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants\u201d and said that Haitians, \u201caccording to their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.\u201d Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities, people of color could achieve as much as white people.[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0 In 1826 the third college graduate of color in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting that, \u201cHaytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.\u201d[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0In 1838 the Colored American<\/em>, an early Black newspaper, professed that \u201cno one who reads, with an unprejudiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of removing all their disabilities.\u201d[4]<\/sup><\/a> Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and equality. Their words and actions\u2014on plantations, streets, and the printed page\u2014left an indelible mark on early national political culture.<\/p>\nThe Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white soldier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodolski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHenry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.<\/p>\nThe first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.<\/p>\n
Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.<\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.<\/p>\nJefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.<\/p>\n
III. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\nFree and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIndeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[8]<\/sup><\/a> Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\nJefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.<\/p>\n
Democratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.<\/p>\n
The celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe artist James Peale painted this portrait of his wife Mary and five of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsible for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHistorians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\nThomas Jefferson\u2019s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans\u2019 material culture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nButtressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.<\/p>\n
Jefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nJefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.<\/p>\nMany Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\nThe attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS \u201cLeopard\u201d and USS \u201cChesapeake\u201d that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair, 1897. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nCriticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nArguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.<\/p>\n
V. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\nThe Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[18]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.<\/p>\nAmericans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nShown in this portrait as a refined gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most effective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. officials. The medal worn around his neck, apparently given to him by George Washington, reflects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThroughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.<\/p>\n
Native diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.<\/p>\nIn the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nTenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet\u2019s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nTecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.<\/p>\n
While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.<\/p>\n
Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nMany Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[21]<\/sup><\/a> With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a> Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.<\/p>\nVI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\nSoon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.<\/p>\n
The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.<\/p>\n
Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.<\/p>\n
In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.<\/p>\nFar from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.<\/p>\n
Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\nIn 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.<\/p>\nConvinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.<\/p>\n
While the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.<\/p>\n
During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nAs pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered \u201csavage\u201d offenses during war, though Americans too were engaging in similar acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the \u201chumane\u201d British and their \u201cworthy\u201d allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAfter the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n
With Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.<\/p>\nTwo and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.<\/p>\nIn 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n
Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nThe artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in flames as the British troops set fire to the city in 1813. \u201cCapture of the City of Washington,\u201d August 1814. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nContemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the figure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its empire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThese proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.<\/p>\n
The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[27]<\/sup><\/a> In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.<\/p>\nFormer treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.<\/p>\nIn 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[29]<\/sup><\/a> He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.<\/p>\nThese projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.<\/p>\n
What may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a> As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.<\/p>\nVII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\nMonroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.<\/p>\n
- Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776), in Eric Foner, ed., Thomas Paine: Collected Writings (New York: Library of America, 1995), 23. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- David Walker, Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, But in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of The United States of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 21, 56. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- John Russwurm, \u201cThe Condition and Prospects of Hayti,\u201d in African Americans and the Haitian Revolution: Selected Essays and Historical Documents, ed. Maurice Jackson and Jacqueline Bacon (New York: Routledge, 2013), 168. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cRepublic of Hayti,\u201d Colored American, March 15, 1838, 2. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Benjamin Rush, \u201cObservations Intended to Favour a Supposition That the Black Color (As It Is Called) of the Negroes is Derived from the Leprosy,\u201d Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 4 (1799): 289\u2013297. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Banneker to Jefferson, August 19, 1791, Founders Online, National Archives, http:\/\/founders.archives.gov\/documents\/Jefferson\/01-22-02-0049<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Fisher Ames, \u201cThe Mire of a Democracy,\u201d in W. B. Allen, ed., Works of Fisher Ames, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1984), Vol. 1: 6, 7. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John Garland Jefferson, January 25, 1810, in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, ed. Julian P. Boyd et al., 40 vols. to date (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950\u2013), Vol. 2: 183. Hereafter cited as PTJ, RS. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819, http:\/\/www.loc.gov\/exhibits\/jefferson\/137.html<\/a>. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, June 5, 1787, in Merrill Jensen, John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, 22 vols. to date (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1976\u2013), Vol. 13: 126\u2013127. The digital edition of the first twenty volumes is available through the University of Virginia Press Rotunda project, edited by John P. Kaminski, Gaspare J. Saladino, et al., http:\/\/rotunda.upress.virginia.edu\/founders\/RNCN.htm<\/a>l. Hereafter cited as DHRC. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alexandria Times, and District of Columbia Daily Advertiser (Alexandria, VA), July 2, 1800; Constitutional Telegraphe (Boston, MA), February 15 and December 6, 1800; Carlisle Gazette (Carlisle, PA), November 6, 1799. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); and Mary Kelley, Learning to Stand and Speak: Women, Education, and Public Life in America\u2019s Republic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to John B. Colvin, September 20, 1810, in PTJ, RS 3: 99, 100, 101. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Jefferson to the Earl of Buchan Washington, July 10, 1803, in Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 40 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2013), 708\u2013709. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- For the Hemings controversy and the DNA evidence, see Annette Gordon-Reed, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Recorder (Richmond, VA), November 3, 1802. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- The Pretensions of Thomas Jefferson to the Presidency Examined; and the Charges Against John Adams Refuted. Addressed to the Citizens of America in General; and Particularly to the Electors of the President, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1796). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- See, for example, Anthony F. C. Wallace, The Death and Rebirth of the Seneca (New York: Random House, 1969), 111. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Gregory Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745\u20131815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 33. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Nicole Eustace, 1812: War and the Passions of Patriotism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 149\u2013153. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Quoted in Edward Eggleston and Elizabeth Eggleston Seelye, Tecumseh and the Shawnee Prophet (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1878), 309. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Amanda Porterfield, Conceived in Doubt: Religion and Politics in the New American Nation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 187. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and Indian Allies (New York: Random House, 2010), 5. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Donald R. Hickey, Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 8. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- \u201cMartin Bibbings, \u201cThe Battle,\u201d in Tim Voelcker, ed., Broke of the Shannon: And the War of 1812 (London: Seaworth Publishing, 2013), 138. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Ronald L. Drez, The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2014), 154. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Morton Keller, America\u2019s Three Regimes: A New Political History: A New Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 69. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Brian Balogh, A Government Out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 130. ↵<\/a><\/li>
- Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817,\u201d in Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (New York: Putnam, 1902), Vol. 6: 11. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":158,"menu_order":7,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-399","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":3,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/158"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":651,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/revisions\/651"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/3"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/399\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/americanyawp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
The Black activism inspired by Haiti\u2019s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scrambled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans as buffoons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the \u201cBobalition\u201d broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans. Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans\u2019 presence in the political conversation was significant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious difference between whiteness and blackness implied that the differences might not be so obvious after all.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Henry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his skin changed, Moss marketed himself as \u201ca great curiosity\u201d in Philadelphia and soon earned enough money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era\u2014including Samuel Stanhope Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush\u2014who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that \u201cthe Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.\u201d[5]<\/sup><\/a> Something, somehow, was \u201ccuring\u201d Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity, many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.<\/p>\n The first decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one\u2019s social and ecological environment\u2014a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension arose due to Enlightenment thinkers\u2019 desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Linnaeus, Comte de Buffon, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between race and place as they divided the racial \u201ctypes\u201d of the world according to skin color, cranial measurements, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened the skin and reconfigured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Europe molded and sustained the \u201cCaucasian\u201d race. The environments endowed both races with respective characteristics, which accounted for differences in humankind tracing back to a common ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental differences but rather the \u201ccivilized\u201d and the \u201cprimitive\u201d\u2014two poles on a scale of social progress.<\/p>\n Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species<\/em>, which further articulated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society, he and others believed, could gradually \u201cwhiten\u201d men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten Henry Moss. Thomas Jefferson disagreed. While Jefferson thought Native Americans could improve and become \u201ccivilized,\u201d he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> (1784) that Black people were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry\u2014a theory known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery\u2014enslavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of justification, the Bible\u2014and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradually send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and Black races too different to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution to America\u2019s racial problem.<\/p>\n Jefferson\u2019s Notes on the State of Virginia<\/em> sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to Jefferson and demanded he \u201ceradicate that train of absurd and false ideas\u201d and instead embrace the belief that we are \u201call of one flesh\u201d and with \u201call the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same faculties.\u201d[6]<\/sup><\/a> \u00a0Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World<\/em> (1829), David Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and racism while praising the inner strength of the race.<\/p>\n Jefferson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hardened Jefferson\u2019s skepticism, offering a \u201cbiological\u201d case for Black and white people not only having separate creations but actually being different species, a position increasingly articulated throughout the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared beliefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from sexual violence and not the environment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been impossible just a generation later.<\/p>\n Free and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Jefferson\u2019s election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published works, many of the nation\u2019s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachusetts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which \u201cshifts with every current of caprice.\u201d Jefferson\u2019s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide \u201cdown into the mire of a democracy.\u201d[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Indeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Jefferson embraced the politics of the masses. \u201cIn a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the confidence of the whole people,\u201d Jefferson wrote in 1810.[8]<\/sup><\/a> Nine years later, looking back on his monumental election, Jefferson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary citizens: \u201cThe revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 76 was in it\u2019s form,\u201d he wrote, \u201cnot effected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and peaceable instrument of reform, the suffrage [voting] of the people.\u201d[9]<\/sup><\/a> Jefferson desired to convince Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to lasting national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern themselves democratically.<\/p>\n Jefferson set out to differentiate his administration from the Federalists. He defined American union by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In contrast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union defined by expansive state power and public submission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Jefferson, the American nation drew its \u201cenergy\u201d and its strength from the \u201cconfidence\u201d of a \u201creasonable\u201d and \u201crational\u201d people.<\/p>\n Democratic-Republican celebrations often credited Jefferson with saving the nation\u2019s republican principles. In a move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in 1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Jefferson championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Democratic-Republicans had peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.<\/p>\n The celebrations of Jefferson\u2019s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens\u2019 willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The definition of citizenship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation. Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public ratification debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to participate in the discussion over the Constitution. \u201cIt is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal Convention for the happiness of America,\u201d a Philadelphia essayist announced. \u201cThey can retain their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers, who are the pillars of crowned heads.\u201d[10]<\/sup><\/a> American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they were mothers to liberty.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Historians have used the term Republican Motherhood<\/em> to describe the early American belief that women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women\u2019s actions became politicized. Some even described women\u2019s choice of sexual partner as crucial to the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. \u201cThe fair Daughters of America\u201d should \u201cnever disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,\u201d a group of New Jersey Democratic-Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted \u201cThe fair Daughters of Columbia. May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.\u201d[11]<\/sup><\/a> Though unmistakably steeped in the gendered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active participants in partisan politics.[12]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Buttressed by robust public support, Jefferson sought to implement policies that reflected his own political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government\u2019s budget, believing that this would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense, and Jefferson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and debt to support its military empire, but Jefferson was determined to live in peace\u2014and that belief led him to reduce America\u2019s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his first term. In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Jefferson authorized the acquisition of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years\u2019 War decades earlier. Jefferson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of profitable sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million\u2014roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and Napoleon\u2019s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Jefferson or Livingston could have imagined.<\/p>\n Jefferson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase, but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Jefferson felt he should be able to \u201cthrow himself on the justice of his country\u201d when he facilitated the interests of the very people he served.[13]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Jefferson\u2019s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte\u2019s armies moved across Europe, Jefferson wrote to a European friend that he was glad that God had \u201cdivided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry lands of ours, and said \u2018here, at least, be there peace.\u2019\u201d[14]<\/sup><\/a> Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon became the site of Jefferson\u2019s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to respect American ships\u2019 neutrality. The greatest offenses came from the British, who resumed the policy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to fight for the British navy.<\/p>\n Many Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em> in 1807. The president, however, decided on a policy of \u201cpeaceable coercion\u201d and Congress agreed. Under the Embargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Jefferson hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Historians disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At first, withholding commerce rather than declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent conflict resolution. In practice, the embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Jefferson\u2019s personal finances suffered. When Americans resorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Jefferson expanded governmental powers to try to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a \u201ctyrant.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Criticism of Jefferson\u2019s policies reflected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic-Republicans. Some Federalists lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender published accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Jefferson was involved in a sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Callender referred to Jefferson as \u201cour little mulatto president,\u201d suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compromised Jefferson\u2019s racial integrity.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Callender\u2019s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on Jefferson\u2019s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Jeffersonian democracy as the beginning of a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.[17]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Arguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less effective than those that borrowed from democratic language and alleged that Jefferson\u2019s actions undermined the sovereignty of the people. When Federalists attacked Jefferson, they often accused him of acting against the interests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Federalists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology\u2014rooted in eighteenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary citizens to an aristocracy of merit\u2014was no longer tenable. The Federalists\u2019 adoption of republican political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct involvement of the citizenry. The Democratic-Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace continued to demand more direct access to political power. Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.<\/p>\n The Jeffersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation stratified along the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and local, state, and national governments offer a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities. Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between European empires, which scholars have called the Play-off System.[18]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, in many parts of North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.<\/p>\n Americans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor, and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in fighting on both sides, Native American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolutionary War. Unsurprisingly, the final document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often condemned by white settlers and government officials as \u201csavages.\u201d White ridicule of Indigenous practices and disregard for Indigenous nations\u2019 property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indigenous peoples to turn away from white practices.<\/p>\n In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for metaphorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Throughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enormous costs for all parties\u2014in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent conflicts arose when diplomacy failed.<\/p>\n Native diplomacy testified to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white attitudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and figurative margins as \u201cignorant savages.\u201d Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.<\/p>\n Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North America\u2019s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created towns in present-day Indiana, first at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in defiance of the Treaty of Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, calling for unification, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.<\/p>\n Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa\u2019s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in Pontiac\u2019s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, influenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief, with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Neolin, the Master of Life\u2014the Great Spirit\u2014urged Native peoples to shrug off their dependency on European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate with one another against the \u201cWhite people\u2019s ways and nature.\u201d[19]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, Neolin advocated violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven Years\u2019 War. His message was particularly effective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys, where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North America lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin\u2019s message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people. From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were embroiled in a war between Pontiac\u2019s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.<\/p>\n In the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin\u2019s message alive while encouraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included the Ottawa leader \u201cthe Trout,\u201d also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Haudenosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again, the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes regions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ottawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against the American republic. Although this \u201cWestern Confederacy\u201d ultimately suffered defeat at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to reformulate federal policy. Tecumseh\u2019s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this conflict probably influenced his later efforts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century predecessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecumseh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native communities of the dangerous and corrupting influences of Euro-American trade and culture. Tenskwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Tenskwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers, this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, especially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth century.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant refusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his efforts to promote unity among Native peoples, Tecumseh also offered these communities a distinctly Native American identity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, together resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement. Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own authority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most visibly during Tenskwatawa\u2019s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.<\/p>\n While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices specific to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave off American encroachments better than violence.<\/p>\n Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for Tecumseh\u2019s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut off from the North by Andrew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson\u2019s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson\u2019s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued existence and profitability of slavery.[20]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n Many Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the American republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811, Tecumseh\u2019s confederation floundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and Britain offered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers.[21]<\/sup><\/a> With the United States distracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative. Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American fighters at Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being surrounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, \u201cOur lives are in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish to leave our bones upon them.\u201d[22]<\/sup><\/a> Soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battlefields of Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native American unity that was not soon forgotten.<\/p>\n Soon after Jefferson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo\u2019s unpopularity, Jefferson still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain loomed\u2014a war that would galvanize the young American nation.<\/p>\n The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues. The first had to do with the nation\u2019s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American interests conflicted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommodating the Americans.<\/p>\n Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the American economy grew quickly during the first decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and American captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation. To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a difficult war and was unwilling to lose any of its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and \u201cimpressed\u201d into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans suffered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal Navy.<\/p>\n In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the British demanded that neutral ships first carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France, and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American response. Jefferson\u2019s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little effect on Europeans.[23]<\/sup><\/a> Within fifteen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with Britain and France. Although efforts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British trade policy remained widespread.<\/p>\n Far from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Tenskwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Indiana, William Henry Harrison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Native Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British efforts to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British sentiments.<\/p>\n Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to complete the War for Independence by preventing British efforts to keep America subjugated at sea and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a counter to the radical experiment of the United States.[24]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n In 1812, the Democratic-Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giving them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the \u201cWar Hawks,\u201d whom one historian describes as \u201ctoo young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution\u201d and thus \u201cwilling to risk another British war to vindicate the nation\u2019s rights and independence.\u201d[25]<\/sup><\/a> This group included men who would remain influential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.<\/p>\n Convinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation\u2019s disputes with the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Democratic-Republicans hoped that an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great Britain.<\/p>\n While the War of 1812 contained two key players\u2014the United States and Great Britain\u2014it also drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three stages or theaters. The first, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time, Great Britain was chiefly occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded Canada and sent their fledgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813 to 1814, the United States launched their second offensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In this period, the Americans won their first successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, concluded with Andrew Jackson\u2019s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.<\/p>\n During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands. In July 1812, the United States launched their first offensive against Canada. By August, however, the British and their allies rebuffed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shattered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n After the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America\u2019s war aims, Americans turned to the infant navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan \u201cFree Trade and Sailors\u2019 Rights!\u201d Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the major naval battles had been fought with little effect on the war\u2019s outcome.<\/p>\n With Britain\u2019s main naval fleet fighting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments stationed in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Americans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS Shannon<\/em> attacked the USS Chesapeake<\/em>, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six minutes, the Chesapeake<\/em> was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not give up. Lawrence commanded them, \u201cTell the men to fire faster! Don\u2019t give up the ship!\u201d[26]<\/sup><\/a> Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon<\/em> defeated the Chesapeake<\/em>, Lawrence\u2019s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.<\/p>\n Two and a half months later the USS Constitution<\/em> squared off with the HMS Guerriere<\/em>. As the Guerriere<\/em> tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution<\/em> pulled along broadside and began hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere<\/em> returned fire, but as one sailor observed, the cannonballs simply bounced off the Constitution<\/em>\u2019s thick hull. \u201cHuzzah! Her sides are made of iron!\u201d shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution<\/em> became known as \u201cOld Ironsides.\u201d In less than thirty-five minutes, the Guerriere<\/em> was so badly damaged that it was set aflame rather than taken as a prize.<\/p>\n In 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British fleet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment virtually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the stanzas of the poem that would later become the national anthem, \u201cThe Star Spangled Banner.\u201d<\/p>\n Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed military campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most significant victories in the Atlantic Ocean in 1813. Napoleon\u2019s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Washington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson\u2019s troops in January 1815. This American victory actually came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American morale and affected how the war has been remembered.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Connecticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Democratic-Republican Party. They produced a document that proposed abolishing the three-fifths rule that afforded southern enslavers disproportionate representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in office, and most importantly, demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that declared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds majority, New England\u2019s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers accused the Hartford Convention\u2019s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the waning power of Federalism and the need for the region\u2019s politicians to shed their aristocratic and Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams, would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state under President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Democratic-Republicans.<\/p>\n The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. During the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Native allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that British officers promised rewards of \u201cbeauty and booty\u201d for their soldiers when they attacked New Orleans.[27]<\/sup><\/a> In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans\u2019 fear of Britain\u2019s Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscriminately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their country. Because the war mostly cut off America\u2019s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans to see themselves as different and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.<\/p>\n Former treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived \u201cnational feelings\u201d that had dwindled after the Revolution. \u201cThe people,\u201d he wrote, were now \u201cmore American; they feel and act more like a nation.\u201d[28]<\/sup><\/a> Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-flung new states like Tennessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six thousand new post offices.<\/p>\n In 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to \u201cbind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals.\u201d[29]<\/sup><\/a> He joined with other politicians, such as Kentucky\u2019s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the United States to provide capital; a high protective tariff, which would raise the prices of imported goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of \u201cinternal improvements,\u201d roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.<\/p>\n These projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would increase the federal government\u2019s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans\u2019 sense of the nation\u2019s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.<\/p>\n What may have been the boldest declaration of America\u2019s postwar pride came in 1823. President James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of independence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its entire hemisphere, both North and South America, off-limits to new European colonization. Although Monroe was a Jeffersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Jefferson cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his first term, Monroe advocated the need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he said would \u201cshorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.\u201d[30]<\/sup><\/a> As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation.<\/p>\n Monroe\u2019s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists. Some predicted an \u201cera of good feelings\u201d and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that \u201cera of good feelings\u201d would never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from political relevance, a schism within the Democratic-Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Political limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrialization and the development of American capitalism required new justifications of inequality. Social change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide \u201ctrue\u201d Americans from dangerous or undeserving \u201cothers.\u201d Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As always, the meaning of democracy was in flux.<\/p>\nIII. Jeffersonian Republicanism<\/span><\/h1>\n
IV. Jefferson as President<\/span><\/h1>\n
V. Native American Power and the United States<\/span><\/h1>\n
VI. The War of 1812<\/span><\/h1>\n
VII. Conclusion<\/span><\/h1>\n