Reading+Notes+-+Chapter+6


 * CHAPTER 6 The Republican Experiment**

After mastering this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Explain the principles that led Sam Adams and other Republicans to vehemently oppose the “Sans Souci Club.” 2. Describe the conflict among American Republicans of the 1780s over the relative importance of liberty as opposed to order. 3. Delineate the types and extent of the social and political changes brought by the American Revolution. 4. **Describe the post-revolutionary positions on slavery of both the North and the South.** 5. Specify the post-revolutionary changes in the expectations, rights, and roles of American women. 6. Describe the major sources and principles of the earliest American constitutions. 7. Identify the major problems of western settlement and evaluate the Confederation Congress's responses to those problems. 8. Identify the major domestic and foreign-policy problems of the Confederation Congress and the nationalists' critique of the congressional responses. 9. **Explain how republican ideology contributed to the ills confronting the country in the 1780s, and how Madison proposed to deal with those problems**. 10. Trace the development of the movement for a new constitution from the Annapolis convention through Shays’ Rebellion to the Philadelphia convention of 1787. 11. **Identify the major differences between the Virginia and New Jersey Plans, then describe the compromise of the issue by the delegates at the convention.** 12. Describe the conflict over slavery and its resolution by the delegates to the Philadelphia convention. 13. **Identify the major issues separating the Federalists and Anti-federalists. Describe and evaluate the positions taken by each.** 14. Trace the ratification process from the organization of the opposing sides to June 1788. 15. Describe and explain the major contribution of the Anti-federalists to the Constitution. 16. Explain why and how the new government protected the people from themselves.
 * LEARNING OBJECTIVES**

In the Revolutionary era, Americans translated republican ideas into practical governments on the local and national levels, but they divided over the relative importance of individual liberty and social order. This chapter explains the controversies that resulted and how those controversies shaped the governments created on the state and national levels.
 * SUMMARY**


 * I. DEFINING REPUBLICAN CULTURE**

Americans divided over the relative importance of individual liberty and social order, the right of private property and the ideal of equality. A series of controversies resulted, shaping the governments created during and after the war for independence.

The American Revolution, which may seem tame in comparison with others, changed American society in unexpected ways.
 * II. LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF REVOLUTION**

Among the major reforms of American society were changes in the laws of inheritance, more liberal voting qualifications, better representation for frontier settlers, and separation of church and state.
 * A. Social and Political Reform**

During the Revolution, African Americans demanded the natural right to be free. The Northern states responded by gradually abolishing slavery. Abolition also became a subject of serious debate in the South, but economic motives overcame republican ideals.
 * B. African Americans in the New Republic**

Women also demanded the natural right of equality and contributed to the creation of a new society by raising children in households where the republican values of freedom and equality were daily practiced. Women became more assertive in divorcing undesirable mates and in opening their own businesses. Nevertheless, they were still denied their political and legal rights.
 * C. The Challenge of Women's Rights**

Although the Revolution did not entirely abolish slavery or give equal rights to women, it did introduce into American life an ideology of freedom and equality that inspired future generations.
 * D. Postponing Full Liberty**

The state constitutions adopted during and just after the Revolution were experiments that provided insights and experience later used when constructing a central government.
 * III. THE STATES: EXPERIMENTS IN REPUBLICANISM**

Americans wanted written constitutions that would clearly define the rights of the people and the limits of government power. These constitutions were experiments that provided valuable lessons that were later used in constructing the central government.
 * A. Blueprints for State Government**

The state constitutions, in different ways, guaranteed freedom of religion, speech and the press. Governors were generally weakened, and the elected assemblies were given most power.
 * B. Natural Rights and the State Constitutions**

Massachusetts developed a procedure for constitution making that all the other states eventually adopted. A constitution had to be written by a convention specially elected for that purpose and ratified by a referendum of the people. Because it was widely believed that the early state constitutions were flawed experiments in republican government, some Americans began to argue that a stronger central government was necessary.
 * C. Power to the People**

The Americans first created a central government in order to fight the war for independence, an effort that required a highly coordinated effort.
 * IV. STUMBLING TOWARD A NEW NATIONAL GOVERNMENT**

John Dickinson presented a plan for a strong national government in 1776, but it failed. His proposal to give all the land beyond the Appalachians to Congress angered states like Virginia, and the large states rejected Dickinson's proposal to continue to give each state equal representation in Congress. After years of debate, the Continental Congress drafted the Articles of Confederation, which gave the central government virtually no power to force the states to do anything. Even so, the states regarded the Articles with suspicion.
 * A. Articles of Confederacy**

The main delay in ratification of the Articles was the problem regarding ownership of the western lands. Some states such as Maryland had no claim to land beyond their boundaries and argued that the western lands should be given to Congress for the benefit of all Americans. Maryland delayed ratification of the Articles until 1781, when Virginia agreed to renounce claims to the West. Other states followed Virginia's example, and Congress wound up owning all the land west of the Appalachian Mountains.
 * B. Western Land: Key to the First Constitution**

The Articles dealt effectively with the western lands, traditionally an area of little law and order. Congress provided local government and the promise of eventual statehood. In order to capitalize quickly on its treasure in land, Congress sold over six million acres to large land companies. These companies, however, experienced difficulty in attracting immigrants or in controlling the people inhabiting the West. By 1787, Congress realized the need for closer supervision and issued the Northwest Ordinance, providing a new government for the area north of the Ohio River. The Ordinance created a number of territories, each headed by a governor appointed by Congress. As the population of a territory increased, it was to acquire the right to more self-rule and eventual statehood. The Ordinance regulated only those lands north of the Ohio River. Congress took almost no interest in the lands south of the Ohio, resulting in tremendous legal confusion about who owned what. There was even an attempt to establish a new state in the area.
 * C. Northwest Ordinance: The Confederation's Major Achievement**

The Congress established by the Articles of Confederation failed to solve America's economic problems and failed to exert a strong foreign policy.
 * V. STRENGTHENING FEDERAL AUTHORITY**

The new government inherited an empty treasury and had to cope with massive economic problems, like runaway inflation and massive debts. Without the power to tax, the Articles Congress could not cope with the situation. A group of "nationalists," like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, tried to give Congress the authority to collect an "impost" on imported goods. The proposal raised immediate objections that the Congress would become too powerful. It took the vote of just one state, Rhode Island, to kill the impost. As Congress sank further in public esteem and failed even to pay the soldiers' wages, a group of extreme nationalists plotted to use the army to establish a strong regime. When Washington learned of the plan, called the Newburgh Conspiracy, he squelched it. After a second attempt to give the Congress an impost failed, the nationalists considered the Articles of Confederation hopelessly defective.
 * A. The Nationalist Critique**

Congress presented such a weak face to the world that other nations were able to insult the United States without fear. England, for example, kept troops on American soil even after the peace treaty. When Spain suddenly closed New Orleans to American commerce in 1784, Congress sent John Jay to Madrid to negotiate a treaty that would reopen the Mississippi to Americans. Instead, Jay signed an agreement that ignored the problem of the Mississippi in exchange for commercial advantages benefiting the Northeast (the Jay-Gardoqui Treaty). The people of the West and South denounced the treaty and forced Congress to reject it.
 * B. Diplomatic Humiliation**

By 1785, thoughtful Americans feared for the future of the United States and realized that a strong central government had become a necessity. This section describes the political ideology behind the Constitution.
 * VI. "HAVE WE FOUGHT FOR THIS?"**

The difficulties experienced by Americans in the 1780s grew in part from their republican ideals. Because they had believed themselves to be virtuous, they had constructed governments that placed no check on the popular will. But the American people soon realized that they did not always behave as virtuous republicans and that they needed a stronger government. James Madison was especially important in recasting American political ideas away from the dogma that only small republics could be free and democratic.
 * A. The Genius of James Madison**

During a convention held at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1786, the nationalists agreed to meet again in Philadelphia in order to scrap the Articles of Confederation and write a new constitution. Before the Philadelphia convention met, a tax protest in Massachusetts turned violent (Shays' Rebellion). Although the incident was minor, the nationalists feared it was the beginning of America's slide into anarchy. The crisis atmosphere persuaded many Americans to support a strong central government.
 * B. Constitutional Reform**

During the spring of 1787, fifty-five delegates, representing all the states except Rhode Island, opened proceedings. The delegates, including people like Washington, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison, were men of wide and practical experience.
 * C. The Philadelphia Convention**

Madison introduced the Virginia Plan, a proposal to create a central government that could veto all acts of the state governments. The central government would have two houses made up of state representatives. The larger the state, the more representatives it would have in these houses. The chief executive would be appointed by Congress. The small states objected to key provisions of the Virginia Plan for fear they would lose their separate identities. They pushed instead for the New Jersey Plan, which would have given Congress greater taxing powers, but would have left the Articles of Confederation basically untouched.
 * D. Inventing a Federal Republic**

The controversy over the two plans ended in compromise. The House of Representatives would be based on population, a victory for the large states, but each state would have two persons in the Senate, a victory for the small states.
 * E. Compromise Saves the Convention**

Although the Convention produced a new Constitution, the need to compromise permitted the slave trade to continue for another twenty years.
 * F. Compromising with Slavery**

In the last weeks of the convention, the delegates hammered out a system of electing the president and translated their various compromises into a written document.
 * G. The Last Details**

Instead of submitting its work to Congress or the state legislatures, the convention gave the power of ratification to special conventions to be elected in each state. As soon as nine such conventions approved the Constitution, it would go into effect.
 * H. We, the People**

The nationalists who wrote the Constitution now had the problem of having it adopted in the state conventions.
 * VII. WHOSE CONSTITUTION? STRUGGLE FOR RATIFICATION**

Those opposed to the Constitution, unfairly called Antifederalists, came close to defeating it. They distrusted any government removed from direct control of the people and suspected that the new Constitution had been written by the rich and powerful for their own benefit. The Federalists, however, enjoyed the support of most of the news media of the time and were well organized. Starting with Delaware, the ratifying conventions approved the Constitution, and by June 1788, only North Carolina and Rhode Island had not done so.
 * A. Federalists and Antifederalists**

The Antifederalists lost the ratification battle, but because of them, the nationalists had to promise to add a bill of rights to the Constitution. By 1791, the first ten amendments had been added.
 * B. Adding the Bill of Rights**

In the 1780s, the American people met the challenge of self-government. When they discovered that it was dangerous to give themselves too much power, they created governments regulated by a system of checks and balances that protected the people from themselves. The ratification of the Constitution closed an era of protest, revolution and political experimentation. The future seemed to belong to the free people of a strong nation.
 * VIII. CONCLUSION: SUCCESS DEPENDS ON THE PEOPLE**