In your initial post to this week's discussion forum, compare information as it is presented to you in the two history textbooks. Use specifics from each book in your post to support your comments. Consider the following as your prepare your post:

20200630033740early_republic.pdf

Home >Business & Finance homework help >Management homework help >In your initial post to this week's discussion forum, compare information as it is presented to you in the two history textbooks. Use specifics from each book in your post to support your comments. Consider the following as your prepare your post:

WINDOW TO THE PAST William Clark, Journal, January 28, 1805

William Clark kept a detailed journal of the 1804–1806 expedition he and Meriwether Lewis led to explore the American West. They were aided by many different Indian groups, especially the Mandan Indians along the Missouri River. They camped near the Mandan in the winter of 1804, before heading into the Rocky Mountains. Here Clark draws a Mandan war hatchet, which was crucial to the tribe’s defense. To discover more about what this primary source can show us, see Document 8.8 on page 292.

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The Early Republic 1790–1820

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

Analyze the ways that social and cultural leaders worked to craft an American identity and how that was complicated by racial, ethnic, and class differences.

Interpret how the Democratic-Republican ideal of limiting federal power was transformed by international events, westward expansion, and Supreme Court rulings between 1800 and 1808.

Explain the ways that technology reshaped the American economy and the lives of distinct groups of Americans.

served as a model of new ideals of companionate marriage, in which husbands and wives shared interests and affection.

Professor Cleaveland believed in using scientific research to benefit society. When Brunswick workers asked him to identify local rocks, Parker began studying geology and chemistry. In 1816 he published his Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology, providing a basic text for students and interested adults. He also lectured throughout New England, displaying mineral samples and performing chemical experiments.

The Cleavelands viewed the Bowdoin College community as a laboratory in which distinctly American values and ideas could be developed and sustained. So, too, did the residents of other college towns. Although less than 1 percent of men in the United States attended universities at the time, frontier colleges were considered important vehicles for bringing virtue—especially the desire to act for the public good—to the far reaches of the early republic. Yet several of these colleges were constructed with the aid of slave labor, and all were built on land bought or confiscated from Indians.

The purchase of the Louisiana Territory by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 marked a new American frontier and ensured further encroachments on native lands. The territory covered 828,000 square miles and stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains and from New Orleans to present- day Montana. The area was home to tens of thousands of Indian inhabitants.

In the late 1780s, a daughter, later named Sacagawea, was born to a family of Shoshone Indians who lived in an area that became part of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1800 she was taken captive by a Hidatsa raiding party. Sacagawea and her fellow captives were marched hundreds of miles to a Hidatsa-Mandan village on the Missouri River. Eventually Sacagawea was sold to a French trader, Toussaint Charbonneau, along with another young Shoshone woman, and both became his wives.

In November 1804, an expedition led by Meri- wether Lewis and William Clark set up winter camp near the Hidatsa village where Sacagawea lived. The U.S. government sent Lewis and Clark to document

AMERICAN HISTORIES

When Parker Cleaveland graduated from Harvard University in 1799, his parents expected him to pursue a career in medicine, law, or the ministry. Instead, he turned to teaching. In 1805 Cleaveland secured a position in Brunswick, Maine, as professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Bowdoin College. A year later, he married Martha Bush. Over the next twenty years, the Cleavelands raised eight children on the Maine frontier, entertained visiting scholars, corresponded with families at other colleges, and boarded dozens of students. While Parker taught those students math and science, Martha trained them in manners and morals. The Cleavelands also

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( left ) Parker Cleaveland. Courtesy the Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick, Maine, USA

( right ) Shoshone woman. (No image of Sacagawea exists.) Joslyn Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, USA/Alecto Historical Editions/Bridgeman Images

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The Dilemmas of National Identity 243 1790–1820

he American histories of both Parker Cleaveland and Sacagawea aided the develop- ment of the United States. Cleaveland gained fame as part of a generation of intellectuals who symbolized Americans’ ingenuity. Although Sacagawea was not considered learned, her understanding of Indian languages and western geography was crucial to Lewis and Clark’s success. Like many other Americans, Sacagawea and Cleave- land forged new identities as the young nation developed. Still, racial, class, and gender differences made it impossible to create a single American identity. At the same time, Democratic-Republican leaders sought to shape a new national identity by promising to limit federal power and enhance state authority and individual rights. Instead, western expansion, international crises, and Supreme Court decisions ensured the expansion of federal power.

portraits of her exist, her presence was crucial, as Clark noted in his journal: “The Wife of Chabono our interpreter we find reconsiles all the Indians, as to our friendly intentions.” Sacagawea did help persuade Indian leaders to assist the expedition, but her extensive knowledge of the terrain and fluency in Indian languages were equally important.

flora and fauna in the Louisiana Territory, enhance trade, and explore routes to the Northwest. Charbon- neau, who spoke French and Hidatsa, and Sacagawea, who spoke several Indian languages, joined the expedition as interpreters in April 1805.

The only woman in the party, Sacagawea traveled with her infant son strapped to her back. Although no

In his inaugural address in March 1801, President Thomas Jef- ferson argued that the vast distance between Europe and the United States was a blessing, allowing Americans to develop their own unique culture and institutions. For many Americans, education offered one means of ensuring a distinctive national

identity. Public schools could train American children in republican values, while the wealthiest among them could attend private academies and colleges. Newspapers, ser- mons, books, magazines, and other printed works could also help forge a common identity among the nation’s far-flung citizens. Even the presence of Indians and Africans contrib- uted to art and literature that were uniquely American. In addition, the construction of a new capital city to house the federal government offered a potent symbol of nationhood.

Yet these developments also illuminated political and racial dilemmas in the young nation. The decision to move the U.S. capital south from Philadelphia was prompted by concerns among southern politicians about the power of northern economic and political elites. The very construction of the capital, in which enslaved and free workers labored side by side, highlighted racial and class differences. Educational opportunities differed by race and class as well as by sex. How could a singular notion of American identity be forged in a country where differences of race, class, and sex loomed so large?

Education for a New Nation. The desire to create a specifically American culture began as soon as the Revolution ended. In 1783 Noah Webster, a schoolmaster, declared that “America must be as independent in literature as in Politics, as famous for arts as for

The Dilemmas of National Identity

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arms.” To promote his vision, Webster published the American Spelling Book (1810) and the American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Webster’s books were widely used in the nation’s expanding network of schools and academies and led to more standardized spelling and pronunciation of commonly used words.

Before the Revolution, public education for children was widely available in New England and the Middle Atlantic region. In the South, only those who could afford private schooling—perhaps 25 percent of the boys and 10 percent of the girls—received any for- mal instruction. Few young people enrolled in high school in any part of the colonies. Fol- lowing the Revolution, state and national leaders proposed ambitious plans for public edu- cation, and in 1789 Massachusetts became the first state to demand that each town provide free schools for local children, though attendance policies were decided by the towns.

The American colonies boasted nine colleges that provided higher education for young men, including Harvard, Yale, King’s College (Columbia), Queen’s College (Rut- gers), and the College of William and Mary. After independence, many Americans wor- ried that these institutions were tainted by British and aristocratic influences. New colleges based on republican ideals needed to be founded.

New England Grammar School In this New England grammar school in the 1790s, boys and girls gather for instruction by their schoolmaster. They likely used one of Noah Webster’s spellers or readers. The schoolmaster taught lessons in geography, as can be seen by the wall map and the two globes at the rear of the room. Granger, NYC

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Frontier towns offered opportunities for colleges to enrich the community and bene- fit the nation. The relative isolation of these villages ensured that students would focus on education. And frontier colleges provided opportunities for ethnic and religious groups outside the Anglo-American mainstream—like Scots-Irish Presbyterians—to cement their place in American society. The young nation benefited as well, albeit at the expense of Indians and their lands. For example, the founding of Franklin College in Athens, Georgia, encouraged white settlement in the state’s interior, an area still largely populated by the Creek and Cherokee.

Frontier colleges were organized as community institutions composed of extended families, where administrators, faculty, and their wives guided students, hosted social events, and hired local workers, including servants and slaves. Women were viewed as exemplars of virtue in the new nation, and professors’ wives served as maternal figures for young adults away from home. Families of modest means could send their sons to these less expensive colleges, depending on faculty couples to expand their intellect and provide moral guidance. In some towns, students at local female academies joined college men at chaperoned events to cultivate proper relations between the sexes.

Literary and Cultural Developments. Older universities also contributed to the development of a national identity. A group known as the Hartford Wits, most of them Yale graduates, gave birth to a new literary tradition. Its members identified mainly as Federalists and published paeans to democracy, satires about Shays’s Rebellion, and plays about the proper role of the central government in a republican nation.

A number of novelists emerged in the early republic as well. Advances in printing and the manufacture of paper increased the circulation of novels, a literary genre developed in Britain and continental Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century. Improvements in girls’ education then produced a growing audience for novels among women. Authors like Susanna Rowson and Charles Brockden Brown sought to educate readers about virtuous action by placing ordinary women and men in moments of high drama that tested their moral character. Novelists also emphasized new marital ideals, by which husbands and wives became partners and companions in creating a home and family.

Washington Irving became a well-known literary figure in the early republic. He wrote a series of popular folktales, including “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” that were published in his Sketchbook in 1820. They drew on the Dutch culture of the Hudson valley region and often poked fun at more celebratory tales of early American history. In one serious essay, Irving challenged popular accounts of colonial wars that ignored courageous actions by Indians while applauding white atrocities.

Still, books that glorified the nation’s past were also enormously popular. Among the most influential were the three-volume History of the Revolution (1805) written by Mercy Otis Warren and the Life of Washington (1806), a celebratory if fanciful biography by Mason Weems. The influence of American authors increased as residents in both urban and rural areas purchased growing numbers of books.

Artists, too, devoted considerable attention to historical themes. Charles Willson Peale painted Revolutionary generals while serving in the Continental Army and became best known for his portraits of George Washington. Samuel Jennings offered a more radi- cal perspective on the nation’s character by incorporating women and African Americans into works like Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences (1792). Engravings, which were

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less expensive than paintings, also circulated widely. Many highlighted national symbols like flags, eagles, and Lady Liberty or uniquely American flora and fauna. William Bartram, the son of a botanist, journeyed through the south- eastern United States and Florida, and published beautiful illustrations of plants and animals in his Travels (1791).

In 1780, the Massachusetts legislature established the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to promote American literature and science. Six years later, Philadel- phia’s American Philosophical Society created the first national prize for scientific endeavor. Philadelphia was also home to the nation’s first medical college, founded at the University of Pennsylvania. Frontier colleges like Bowdoin also promoted new scientific discoveries. As in the arts, American scientists built on developments in continental Europe and Britain but prided themselves on contributing their own expertise.

The Racial Limits of an American Culture. American Indians received sig- nificant attention from writers and scientists. White Americans in the early republic often wielded native names and symbols as they sought to create a distinct national identity. Some Americans, including whiskey rebels, followed in the tradition of the Boston Tea Party, dressing as Indians to protest economic and political tyranny (see “The Whiskey Rebellion” in Chapter 7). But more affluent whites also embraced Indian names and sym- bols. Tammany societies, which promoted patriotism and republicanism in the late eigh- teenth century, were named after a mythical Delaware chief called Tammend. They attracted large numbers of lawyers, merchants, and skilled artisans.

Poets, too, focused on American Indians. In his 1787 poem “Indian Burying Ground,” Philip Freneau offered a sentimental portrait that highlighted the lost heritage of a nearly extinct native culture in New England. The theme of lost cultures and heroic (if still sav- age) Indians became even more pronounced in American poetry in the following decades. Such sentimental portraits of American Indians were less popular along the nation’s fron- tier, where Indians continued to fight for their lands and rights.

Sympathetic depictions of Africans and African Americans by white artists and authors appeared even less frequently. Most were produced in the North and were intended for the rare patrons who opposed slavery. Typical images of blacks and Indians were far more demeaning. When describing Indians in frontier regions, white Americans generally focused on their savagery and their duplicity. Most images of Africans and African Americans exaggerated their perceived physical and intellectual differences from whites, to imply an innate inferiority.

Whether their depictions were realistic, sentimental, or derogatory, Africans, African Americans, and American Indians were almost always presented to the American public through the eyes of whites. Educated blacks like the Reverend Richard Allen of Philadel- phia or the Reverend Thomas Paul of Boston wrote mainly for black audiences or corre- sponded privately with sympathetic whites. Similarly, cultural leaders among American Indians worked mainly within their own nations either to maintain traditional languages and customs or to introduce their people to Anglo-American ideas and beliefs.

The improved educational opportunities available to white Americans generally excluded blacks and Indians. Most southern planters had little desire to teach their slaves to read and write. Even in the North, states did not generally incorporate black children into their plans for public education. African Americans in cities with large free black

Explore

See Document 8.1 for one artist’s image of republican education.

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Samuel Jennings | Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, 1792 Samuel Jennings was born in Philadelphia and attended the College of Philadelphia before the Revolution. He taught drawing and painted portraits before moving to London to study with Benjamin West in 1787. There his allegorical paintings were exhibited at the Royal Academy. Jennings painted this image for the newly established Library Company of Philadelphia, many of whose directors were Quakers who opposed slavery. The directors requested that he include Lady Liberty with her cap on the end of a pole.

Which arts and sciences are displayed in this painting?

What does the broken chain at the feet of Lady Liberty indicate?

What distinguishes the black people inside and outside the building?

Put It in Context

What does this painting suggest about how Jennings and the Library Company directors envisioned American identities in the early republic?

Document 8.1

G U I D E D A N A LY S I S

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic248 1790–1820

populations established the most long-lived schools for their race. The Reverend Allen opened a Sunday school for children in 1795 at his African Methodist Episcopal Church, and other free blacks formed literary and debating societies. Still, only a small percentage of African Americans received an education equivalent to that available to whites in the early republic.

U.S. political leaders were more interested in the education of American Indians, but government officials left their schooling to religious groups. Several denominations sent missionaries to the Seneca, Cherokee, and other tribes, and a few successful students were then sent to American colleges to be trained as ministers or teachers for their own people. This was important since few whites bothered to learn Indian languages.

The divergent approaches that whites took to Indian and African American education demonstrated broader assumptions about the two groups. Most white Americans believed that Indians were untamed and uncivilized, but not innately different from Europeans. Africans and African Americans, on the other hand, were assumed to be inferior, and most whites believed that no amount of education could change that. As U.S. frontiers

expanded, white Americans considered ways to “civilize” Indians and incorporate them into the nation. But the requirements of slavery made it much more difficult for whites to imagine African Americans as anything more than lowly laborers, despite free blacks who clearly dem- onstrated otherwise.

Aware of the limited opportunities available in the United States, some African Americans considered the benefits of moving elsewhere. In the late 1780s, the New- port African Union Society in Rhode Island developed a plan to establish a community for American blacks in Africa. Many whites, too, viewed the settlement of blacks in Africa as the only way to solve the nation’s racial dilemma.

Over the next three decades, the idea of emigration (as blacks viewed it) or colonization (as whites saw it) received widespread attention. Those who opposed slav- ery hoped to persuade slave owners to free or sell their human property on the condition that they be shipped

Benjamin Banneker’s Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac, 1795 Benjamin Banneker (here spelled Bannaker) was a free black from Baltimore County, Maryland. Largely self-educated, he was a talented astronomer who compiled almanacs that included annual calendars, tide charts, lunar and solar observations, and statistical charts. Almanacs were widely used by farm- ers, sailors, and the general public. Banneker’s almanac included his portrait to highlight his achievements as a black man. Granger, NYC

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The Dilemmas of National Identity 249 1790–1820

to Africa. Others assumed that free blacks could find opportunities in Africa that were not available to them in the United States. Still others simply wanted to rid the nation of its race problem by ridding it of blacks. In 1817 a group of southern slave owners and north- ern merchants formed the American Colonization Society (ACS) to establish colonies of freed slaves and free-born American blacks in Africa. Although some African Americans supported this scheme, northern free blacks generally opposed it, viewing colonization as an effort originating “more immediately from prejudice than philanthropy.” Ultimately the plans of the ACS proved impractical. Particularly as cotton production expanded from the 1790s on, few slave owners were willing to emancipate their workers.

A New Capital for a New Nation. The construction of Washington City, the new capital, provided an opportunity to highlight the nation’s distinctive culture and iden- tity. But here, again, slavery emerged as a crucial part of that identity. The capital was situ- ated along the Potomac River between Virginia and Maryland, an area where more than 300,000 enslaved workers lived. Between 1792 and 1809, hundreds of enslaved men and a few women were hired out by their owners, who were paid $5 per month for each individ- ual’s labor. Enslaved men cleared trees and stumps, built roads, dug trenches, baked bricks, and cut and laid sandstone while enslaved women cooked, did laundry, and nursed the

The United States Capitol This watercolor by William Russell Birch presents a view of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., before it was burned down by the British during the War of 1812. Birch had emigrated from England in 1794 and lived in Philadelphia. As this painting suggests, neither the Capitol nor the city was as yet a vibrant center of republican achievements. Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ppmsca-22593

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sick and injured. A small number performed skilled labor as carpenters or assistants to stonemasons and surveyors. Some four hundred slaves worked on the Capitol building alone, more than half the workforce.

Free blacks also participated in the development of Washington. Many worked along- side enslaved laborers, but a few held important positions. Benjamin Banneker, for exam- ple, a self-taught clock maker, astronomer, and surveyor, was hired as an assistant to the surveyor Major Andrew Ellicott. In 1791 Banneker helped to plot the 100-square-mile site on which the capital was to be built.

African Americans often worked alongside Irish immigrants, whose wages were kept in check by the availability of slave labor. Most workers, regardless of race, faced poor housing, sparse meals, malarial fevers, and limited medical care. Despite these obstacles, in less than a decade, a system of roads was laid out and cleared, the Executive Mansion was built, and the north wing of the Capitol was completed.

More prosperous immigrants and foreign professionals were also involved in creating the U.S. capital. Irish-born James Hoban designed the Executive Mansion. A French engi- neer developed the plan for the city’s streets. A West Indian physician turned architect drew the blueprints for the Capitol building, the construction of which was directed by Englishman Benjamin Latrobe. Perhaps what was most “American” about the new capital was the diverse nationalities and races of those who designed and built it.

Washington’s founders envisioned the city as a beacon to the world, proclaiming the advantages of the nation’s republican principles. But its location on a slow-moving river and its clay soil left the area hot, humid, and dusty in the summer and muddy and damp in the winter and spring. When John Adams and his administration moved to Washington in June 1800, they considered themselves on the frontiers of civilization. The tree stumps that remained on the mile-long road from the Capitol to the Executive Mansion made it nearly impossible to navigate in a carriage. On rainy days, when roads proved impassable, offi- cials walked or rode horses to work. Many early residents painted Washington in harsh tones. New Hampshire congressional representative Ebenezer Matroon wrote a friend, “If I wished to punish a culprit, I would send him to do penance in this place . . . this swamp— this lonesome dreary swamp, secluded from every delightful or pleasing thing.”

Despite its critics, Washington was the seat of federal power and thus played an important role in the social and political worlds of American elites. From January through March, the height of the social season, the wives of congressmen, judges, and other offi- cials created a lively schedule of teas, parties, and balls in the capital city. When Thomas Jefferson became president, he opened the White House to visitors on a regular basis. Yet for all his republican principles, Jefferson moved into the Executive Mansion with a reti- nue of slaves.

In decades to come, Washington City would become Washington, D.C., a city with broad boulevards decorated with beautiful monuments to the American political experi- ment. And the Executive Mansion would become the White House, a proud symbol of republican government. Yet Washington was always characterized by wide disparities in wealth, status, and power, which were especially visible when slaves labored in the Execu- tive Mansion’s kitchen, laundry, and yard. President Jefferson’s efforts to incorporate new territories into the United States only exacerbated these divisions by providing more eco- nomic opportunities for planters, investors, and white farmers while ensuring the expan- sion of slavery and the decimation of American Indians.

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REVIEW & RELATE

How did developments in education, literature, and the arts contribute to the emergence of a distinctly American identity?

How did blacks and American Indians both contribute to and challenge the predominantly white view of American identity?

Thomas Jefferson, like other Democratic-Republicans, envisioned the United States as a republic composed of small, independent farmers who had little need and less desire for expansive federal power. Despite Jefferson’s early efforts to impose this vision on the government, devel- opments in international affairs soon converged with Supreme Court

rulings to expand federal power. But Jefferson, too, contributed to this expansion. Imagin- ing the nation’s extensive frontiers as a boon to its development, he purchased the Louisi- ana Territory from France in 1803. The purchase and development of this vast territory increased federal authority. It also raised new questions about the place of Indians and African Americans in a republican society.

A New Administration Faces Challenges. In 1801 Democratic-Republicans worked quickly to implement their vision of limited federal power. Holding the majority in Congress, they repealed the whiskey tax and let the Alien and Sedition Acts expire. Jef- ferson significantly reduced government expenditures, and immediately set about slashing the national debt, cutting it nearly in half by the end of his second term. Democratic- Republicans also worked to curb the powers granted to the Bank of the United States and the federal court system.

Soon, however, international upheavals forced Jefferson to make fuller use of his pres- idential powers. The U.S. government had paid tribute to the Barbary States of North Africa during the 1790s to gain protection for American merchant ships. The new presi- dent opposed this practice and in 1801 refused to continue the payments. The Barbary pirates quickly resumed their attacks, and Jefferson was forced to send the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to retaliate. Although a combined American and Arab force did not achieve their objective of capturing Tripoli, the Ottoman viceroy agreed to negotiate a new agree- ment with the United States. Seeking to avoid all-out war, Congress accepted a treaty with the Barbary States that reduced the tribute payment.

Jefferson had also followed the developing crisis in the West Indies during the 1790s. In 1791 slaves on the sugar-rich island of Saint Domingue launched a revolt against French rule. The Haitian Revolution escalated into a complicated conflict in which free people of color, white slave owners, and slaves formed competing alliances with British and Spanish forces as well as with leaders of the French Revolution. Finally, in December 1799, Tous- saint L’Ouverture, a military leader and former slave, claimed the presidency of the new Republic of Haiti. But Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France that same year and sent

thousands of troops to reclaim the island. Toussaint was shipped off to France, where he died in prison, and many Haitians fled to the United States, but other Haitian rebels continued the fight.

In the United States, reactions to the revolution were mixed, but southern whites feared that it might incite rebellions among their slaves. In 1800 Gabriel,

Extending Federal Power

Explore

See Documents 8.2 and 8.3 for two views on the revolution in Haiti.

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic252 1790–1820

White Responses to Black Rebellion White southerners who feared the effect of the Haitian Revolution were nonetheless shocked when Gabriel, an enslaved blacksmith, plotted a rebellion in Virginia. Upon the plot’s discovery, thirty blacks were tried and convicted, and twenty-seven executed for conspiring to rebel. In the first document, President Jefferson expresses concern about slave rebellions but also about the punishment of insurgents. The second document, by Leonore Sansay, the wife of a Saint-Domingue planter, captures the situation in Haiti in 1802 as France fought to reclaim its colony. Sansay, who had earlier met Vice President Aaron Burr, writes to him about conditions on the island.

Document 8.2

C O M PA R AT I V E A N A LY S I S

The course of things in the neighboring islands of the West Indies appears to have given a considerable impulse to the minds of the slaves in different parts of the U.S. A great disposition to insurgency has manifested itself among them, which, in one instance, in the state of Virginia, broke out into actual insurrection. This was easily suppressed; but many of those concerned, (between 20 and 30, I believe) fell victims to the law. So extensive an execution could not but excite sensibility in the public mind, and beget a regret that the laws had not provided, for such cases, some alternative, combining more mildness with equal efficacy. The legislature of the state, at a subsequent meeting, took the

Thomas Jefferson | Letter to U.S. Minister to Great Britain Rufus King, July 1802

subject into consideration, and have communicated to me . . . their wish that some place could be provided, out of the limits of the U.S., to which slaves guilty of insurgency might be transported; and they have particularly looked to Africa as offering the most desirable receptacle. We might for this purpose, enter into negotiations with the natives, on some part of the coast, to obtain a settlement and, by establishing an African company, combine with it commercial operations, which might not only reimburse expenses but procure profit also.

Source: Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1896), 8:161–64.

an enslaved blacksmith in Richmond, Virginia, plotted such a rebellion. Inspired by both the American and Haitian revolutions, supporters rallied around the demand for “Death or Liberty.” Gabriel’s plan failed when informants betrayed him to authorities. Nonethe- less, news of the plot traveled across the South and terrified white residents. Their anxiet- ies were probably heightened when in November 1803, prolonged fighting, yellow fever, and the loss of sixty thousand soldiers forced Napoleon to admit defeat in Haiti. Haiti became the first independent black-led nation in the Americas.

Acquiring the Louisiana Territory. In France’s defeat Jefferson saw an opportu- nity to gain navigation rights on the Mississippi River, which the French controlled. This

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Extending Federal Power 253 1790–1820

Put It in Context

How might reports of the Haitian Revolution and the Virginia rebellion have contributed to debates over the future of slavery in the early years of the United States?

The so much desired general Rochambeau is at length here. His arrival was announced . . . by the firing of cannon. . . . Nothing is heard of but the public joy. He is considered as the guardian, as the saviour of the people. Every proprietor feels himself already in his habitation [plantation] and I have even heard some of them disputing about the quality of the coffee they expect soon to gather. . . .

The arrival of General Rochambeau seems to have spread terror among the negroes[.] I wish they were reduced to order so that I might see the so much vaunted habitations where I should repose beneath the shade of orange groves, walk on carpets of rose leaves and Frenchipone; be fanned to sleep by silent slaves. . . .

What a delightful existence! . . .

Document 8.3

Leonora Sansay | Letter to Aaron Burr, November 1802 But the moment of enjoying these pleasures

is, I fear, far distant. The negroes have felt during ten years the blessing of liberty, for a blessing it certainly is, however acquired, and then will not easily be deprived of it. They have fought and vanquished French troops, and their strength has increased from a knowledge of the weakness of their opposer, and the climate itself combats for them. . . .

Every evening several old Creoles . . . assemble at our house, and talk of their affairs. One of them . . . now lives in a miserable hut. . . . Yet he still hopes for better days, in which hope they all join him.

Source: Mary Hassal [Leonora Sansay], Secret History of the Horrors of St. Domingo, in a Series of Letters Written by a Lady at Cape François to Colonel Burr (Philadelphia: Bradford & Inskelp, 1808), 430–32.

Interpret the Evidence

1. How does Thomas Jefferson view the influence of West Indies rebellions on U.S. slaves, and why is he reluctant to respond to conspiracies by executing large numbers of insurgents?

2. How would you compare Leonora Sansay’s response to black rebellion in Saint-Domingue/Haiti with Jefferson’s response to conspiracies in Virginia? What accounts for the similarities and differences?

was a matter of crucial concern to Americans living west of the Appalachian Mountains. Jefferson sent James Monroe to France to offer Napoleon $2 million to ensure Americans the right of navigation and deposit (i.e., offloading cargo from ships) on the Mississippi. To Jefferson’s surprise, Napoleon offered instead to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million.

The president agonized over the constitutionality of this Louisiana Purchase. Since the Constitution contained no provisions for buying land from foreign nations, a strict interpretation would prohibit the purchase. In the end, though, the opportunity proved too tempting, and the president finally agreed to buy the Louisiana Territory. Jefferson justified his decision by arguing that the territory would allow for the removal of more Indians from

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic254 1790–1820

east of the Mississippi River, end European influence in the region, and expand U.S. trade networks. Opponents viewed the purchase as benefiting mainly agrarian interests and sus- pected Jefferson of trying to offset Federalist power in the Northeast. Neither party seemed especially concerned about the French, Spanish, or native peoples living in the region. They came under U.S. control when the Senate approved the purchase in October 1803. And the acquisition proved popular among ordinary Americans, most of whom focused on the opportunities it offered rather than the expansion of federal power it ensured.

At Jefferson’s request, Congress had already appropriated funds for an expedition known as the Corps of Discovery to explore territory along the Missouri River. That expedition could now explore much of the Louisiana Territory. The president’s personal secretary, Meriwether Lewis, headed the venture and invited fellow Virginian William Clark to serve as co-captain. The two set off with about forty-five men on May 14, 1804. For two years, they traveled thousands of miles up the Missouri River, through the north- ern plains, over the Rocky Mountains, and beyond the Louisiana Territory to the Pacific coast. Sacagawea and her husband joined them in April 1805 as they headed into the Rocky Mountains. Throughout the expedition, members meticulously recorded observa- tions about local plants and animals as well as Indian residents, providing valuable evi- dence for young scientists like Parker Cleaveland and fascinating information for ordinary Americans. See Document Project 8: The Corps of Discovery: Paeans to Peace and Instruments of War, page 270.

Sacagawea was the only Indian to travel as a permanent member of the expedition, but many other native women and men assisted the Corps when it journeyed near their villages. They provided food and lodging for the Corps, hauled baggage up steep moun- tain trails, and traded food, horses, and other items. The one African American on the expedition, a slave named York, also helped negotiate trade with local Indians. York, who realized his value as a trader, hunter, and scout, asked Clark for his freedom when the expedition ended in 1806. York did eventually become a free man, but it is not clear whether it was by Clark’s choice or York’s escape.

Other expeditions followed Lewis and Clark’s venture. In 1806 Lieutenant Zebulon Pike led a group to explore the southern portion of the Louisiana Territory (Map 8.1). After traveling from St. Louis to the Rocky Mountains, the expedition entered Mexican territory. In early 1807, Pike and his men were captured by Mexican forces. They were returned to the United States at the Louisiana border that July. Pike had learned a great deal about lands that would eventually become part of the United States and about Mexi- can desires to overthrow Spanish rule, information that proved valuable over the next two decades.

Early in this series of expeditions, in November 1804, Jefferson easily won reelection as president. His popularity among farmers, already high, increased when Congress reduced the minimum allotment for federal land sales from 320 to 160 acres. This act allowed more farmers to purchase land on their own rather than via speculators. Yet by the time of Jefferson’s second inauguration in March 1805, the president’s vision of limiting federal power had been shattered by his own actions and those of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court Extends Its Reach. In 1801, just before the Federalist- dominated Congress turned over power to the Democratic-Republicans, it passed a new Judiciary Act. The act created six additional circuit courts and sixteen new judgeships,

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Extending Federal Power 255 1790–1820

which President Adams filled with Federalist “midnight appointments” before he left office. Jefferson accused the Federalists of having “retired into the judiciary” and worried that “from that battery all the works of Republicanism are to be beaten down and destroyed.” Meanwhile John Marshall, chief justice of the United States (1801–1835), insisted that the powers of the Supreme Court must be equal to and balance those of the executive and legislative branches.

One of the first cases to test the Court’s authority involved a dispute over President Adams’s midnight appointments. Jefferson’s secretary of state, James Madison, refused to deliver the appointment papers to several of the appointees, including William Marbury. Marbury and three others sued Madison to receive their commissions. In Marbury v. Madison (1803), the Supreme Court ruled that it was not empowered to force the execu- tive branch to give Marbury his commission. But in his decision, Chief Justice Marshall declared that the Supreme Court did have the duty “to say what the law is.” He thus asserted

Ft. Clatsop Winter quarters 1805–1806

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HEW_9462_08_M01 Lewis and Clark and the Zebulon Pike Expedition First proof

MAP 8.1 Lewis and Clark and Zebulon Pike Expeditions, 1804–1807

The expeditions led by Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Zebulon Pike illustrate the vast regions explored in just four years after the U.S. purchase of the Louisiana Territory. Journeying through and beyond the borders of that territory, the explorers gathered information about Indian nations, plants, animals, and the natural terrain even as Comanche and Shoshone nations, with access to horses, transformed the region.

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic256 1790–1820

a fundamental constitutional power: that the Supreme Court had the authority to decide which federal laws were constitutional. The following year, the Court also claimed the right to rule on the constitutionality of state laws. In doing so, the Court rejected Democratic- Republicans’ claim that state legislatures had the power to repudiate federal law.

Over the next dozen years, the Supreme Court continued to assert Federalist princi- ples. In 1810 it insisted that it was the proper and sole arena for determining matters of constitutional interpretation. Then in 1819, the highest court reinforced its loose interpre- tation of the Constitution’s implied powers clause in McCulloch v. Maryland. This clause gave the federal government the right to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper” for carrying out the explicit powers granted to it by the Constitution. Despite Democratic-Republicans’ earlier opposition to a national bank, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States in 1816, and its branch banks issued notes that circulated widely in local communities. Legislators in Maryland, believing that branch banks had gained excessive power, approved a tax on their operations. Marshall’s Court ruled that the establishment of the bank was “necessary and proper” for the functioning of the national government and rejected Maryland’s right to tax the branch bank, claiming that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

By 1820 the Supreme Court, under the forceful direction of John Marshall, had estab- lished the power of judicial review—the authority of the nation’s highest court to rule on cases involving states as well as the nation. From the Court’s perspective, the judiciary was as important an institution in framing and preserving a national agenda as Congress or the president.

Democratic-Republicans Expand Federal Powers. Although Demo- cratic-Republicans generally opposed Marshall’s rulings, they, too, continued to expand federal power. Once again, international developments drove the Jefferson administra- tion’s political agenda. By 1805 the security of the United States was threatened by contin- ued conflicts between France and Great Britain. Both sought alliances with the young nation, and both ignored U.S. claims of neutrality. Indeed, each nation sought to punish Americans for trading with the other. Britain’s Royal Navy began stopping American ships carrying sugar and molasses from the French West Indies and, between 1802 and 1811, impressed more than eight thousand sailors from such ships, including many American citizens. France claimed a similar right to stop U.S. ships that continued to trade with Great Britain.

Unable to convince foreign powers to recognize U.S. neutrality, Jefferson and Madi- son pushed for congressional passage of an embargo that they hoped would, like colonial boycotts, force Great Britain’s hand. In 1807 Congress passed the Embargo Act, which prohibited U.S. ships from leaving their home ports until Britain and France repealed their restrictions on American trade. Although the act kept the United States out of war, it had a devastating impact on national commerce.

New England merchants immediately voiced their outrage, and some began sending goods to Europe via Canada. In response, Congress passed the Force Act, granting extraor- dinary powers to customs officials to end such smuggling. The economic pain caused by the rapid decline in trade spread well beyond the merchant class. Parker Cleaveland was forced to sell his home to the Bowdoin trustees and become their tenant. Farmers and urban workers as well as southern planters suffered the embargo’s effects more directly.

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Extending Federal Power 257 1790–1820

Exports nearly stopped, and sailors and dockworkers faced escalating unemployment. With the recession deepening, American concerns about the expansion of federal power reemerged. Congress and the president had not simply regulated international trade; they had brought it to a halt.

Still, despite the failure of the Embargo Act, many Americans viewed Jefferson favor- ably. He had devoted his adult life to the creation of the United States. He had purchased the Louisiana Territory, opening up vast lands to American exploration and development. This geographical boon encouraged inventors and artisans to pursue ideas that would help the early republic take full advantage of its resources and recover from its current eco- nomic plight. Some must have wondered, however, how a Democratic-Republican presi- dent had so significantly expanded the power of the federal government.

REVIEW & RELATE

Opposition to the Embargo Act Although Congress repealed the Embargo Act in 1809, lawmakers still barred the United States from trading with Great Britain and France, both of which attacked American shipping in violation of U.S. neutrality. This political cartoon by Alexander Anderson criticizes the embargo, which proved costly to merchants, sailors, and dockworkers. Here a merchant carrying a barrel of goods curses the snapping turtle “Ograbme,” which is embargo spelled backward. Granger, NYC

How did the Federalist-dominated courts and the Democratic-Republican president and Congress each contribute to the expansion of the federal government?

How did the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France and international conflicts with France and Britain shape domestic issues in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic258 1790–1820

As the United States expanded geographically, techno- logical ingenuity became a highly valued commodity. The spread of U.S. settlements into new territories necessitated improved forms of transportation and communication and increased demands for muskets

and other weapons to protect the nation’s frontier. The growing population also fueled improvements in agriculture and manufacturing to meet demands for clothing, food, and farm equipment. Continued conflicts with Great Britain and France also highlighted the need to develop the nation’s natural resources and technological capabilities. Yet even though American ingenuity was widely praised, the daily lives of most Americans changed slowly. And for some, especially enslaved women and men, technological advances only added to their burdens.

The U.S. Population Grows and Migrates. Although Democratic-Republi- cans initially hoped to limit the powers of the national government, the rapid growth of the United States pulled in the opposite direction. An increased population, combined with the exhaustion of farmland along the eastern seaboard, fueled migration to the West as well as the growth of cities. These developments heightened conflicts with Indians and over slavery, but they also encouraged innovations in transportation and communication and improvements in agriculture and manufacturing.

As white Americans encroached more deeply on lands long settled by native peoples, Indian tribes were forced ever westward. As early as 1800, groups like the Shoshone, who originally inhabited the Great Plains, had been forced into the Rocky Mountains by Indi- ans moving into the plains from the Mississippi and Ohio valleys (Map 8.2). Sacagawea must have realized that the expedition she accompanied would only increase pressure on the Shoshone and other nations as white migration escalated.

Although the vast majority of Americans continued to live in rural areas, a growing number moved to cities as eastern farmland lost its fertility and young people sought job opportunities in manufacturing, skilled trades, and service work. Cities were defined at the time as places with 8,000 or more inhabitants, but New York City and Philadelphia both counted more than 100,000 residents by 1810. In New York, immigrants, most of them Irish, made up about 10 percent of the population in 1820 and twice that percentage five years later. At the same time, the number of African Americans in New York City increased to more than 10,000. Cities began to emerge along the nation’s frontier as well. After the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans became a key commercial center while west- ern migration fueled cities like Cincinnati. Even smaller frontier towns, like Rock Island, Illinois, served important functions for migrants traveling west. Trading posts appeared across the Mississippi valley, which eased the migration of thousands headed farther west. They served as sites of exchange between Indians and white Americans and created the foundations for later cities (Table 8.1).

Most Americans who headed west hoped to benefit from the increasingly liberal terms for land offered by the federal government. Yeomen farmers sought sufficient acre- age to feed their families and grow some crops for sale. They were eager to settle in west- ern sections of the original thirteen states, in the Ohio River valley, or in newly opened territories along the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. In the South, small farmers had to com- pete with slave-owning planters who headed west in the early nineteenth century. Migrants

Remaking America’s Economic Character

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Remaking America’s Economic Character 259 1790–1820

to the Mississippi valley also had to contend with a sizable population of Spanish and French residents, as well as Chickasaw and Creek Indians in the South and Shawnee, Chip- pewa, Sauk, and Fox communities farther north.

The development of roads and turnpikes hastened the movement of people and the transportation of goods. Frontier farmers wanted to get their produce to eastern markets quickly and cheaply. Before completion of the Lancaster Turnpike in Pennsylvania, it cost as much to carry wheat overland the sixty-two miles to Philadelphia as it did to ship it by sea from Philadelphia to London. Those who lived farther west faced even greater challenges. With the admission of Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796), and Ohio (1803) to the Union,

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HEW_9462_08_M02 Indian Cessions 1790-1820 First proof

MAP 8.2 Indian Land Cessions, 1790–1820

With the ratification of the Constitution, the federal government gained greater control over Indian relations, including land cessions. At the same time, large numbers of white settlers poured into regions west of the Appalachian Mountains. The U.S. government gained most Indian land by purchase or treaty, but these agreements were often the consequence of military victories by the U.S. Army.

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic260 1790–1820

demands for congressional support for building transportation routes grew louder. By 1819 five more states had been admitted along the Mississippi River, from Louisiana to Illinois.

During Jefferson’s administration, secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin urged Congress to fund roads and canals to enhance the economic development of the nation. He advocated a “great turnpike road” along the Atlantic seaboard from Maine to Georgia as well as roads to connect the four main rivers that flowed from the Appalachians to the Atlantic Ocean. Although traditionally such projects were funded by the states, in 1815 Congress approved funds for a National Road from western Maryland through south- western Pennsylvania to Wheeling, West Virginia. This so-called Cumberland Road was completed in 1818 and later extended into Ohio and Illinois.

Carrying people and goods by water was even faster and cheaper than transporting them over land, but rivers ran mainly north and south. In addition, although loads could be delivered quickly downstream, the return voyage was long and slow. While politicians advocated the construction of canals along east-west routes to link river systems, inventors and mechanics focused on building boats powered by steam to overcome the problems of sending goods upriver.

In 1804 Oliver Evans, a machinist in Philadelphia, invented a high-pressure steam engine attached to a dredge that cleaned the silt around the docks in Philadelphia harbor. He had insufficient funds, however, to pursue work on a steam-powered boat. Robert Ful- ton, a New Yorker, improved on Evans’s efforts, using the low-pressure steam engine devel- oped in England. In 1807 Fulton launched the first successful steamboat, the Clermont,

TABLE 8.1 Prices at George Davenport’s Trading Post, Rock Island, Illinois, c. 1820

Item Price Item Price

Ax $6.00 Large copper kettle $30.00

Beaver trap $8.00 Lead $0.20 per pound

Black silk handkerchief $2.00 Lead shot for guns $1.00 per 5 pounds

Breechcloth $3.00 Medium copper kettle $10.00

Bridles $2.00–$10.00 Muskrat spear $2.00

Chain for staking down traps $0.75 per 6 feet Muskrat trap $5.00

Combs $1.00 per pair Muslin or calico shirt $3.00

File (for sharpening axes) $2.00 Ordinary butcher knife $0.50

Flannel $1.00 per yard Sheet iron kettle $10.00

Flannel mantle $3.00 Small copper kettle $3.00

Gunflints $1.00 per 15 Spurs $6.00 per pair

Hand-size mirrors $0.25 Tin kettle $14.00

Heavy wool cloth $10.00 per yard Tomahawk $1.50

Hoe $2.00 Trade gun $20.00–$25.00

Horn of gunpowder $1.50 Wool blanket $4.00

Horses $35.00–$50.00 Wool mantle (short cloak or shawl) $4.00

Source: Will Leinicke, Marion Lardner, and Ferrel Anderson, Two Nations, One Land (Rock Island, IL: Citizens to Preserve Black Hawk Park, 1981).

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Remaking America’s Economic Character 261 1790–1820

which traveled up the Hudson River from New York City to Albany in only thirty-two hours. The powerful Mississippi River proved a greater challenge, but by combining Evans’s high-pressure steam engine with a flat-bottom hull that avoided the river’s sand- bars, mechanics who worked along the frontier improved Fulton’s design and launched the steamboat era in the West.

Technology Reshapes Agriculture and Industry. Advances in agricultural and industrial technology paralleled the development of roads and steamboats. Here, too, a single invention spurred others, inducing a multiplier effect that inspired additional dramatic changes. Two inventions—the cotton gin and the spinning machine—were espe- cially notable in transforming southern agriculture and northern industry, transforma- tions that were deeply intertwined.

American developments were also closely tied to the earlier rise of industry in Great Britain. By the 1770s, British manufacturers had built spinning mills in which steam- powered machines spun raw cotton into yarn. Eager to maintain their monopoly on indus- trial technology, the British made it illegal for engineers to emigrate. They could not stop

Samuel Slater’s Mill, c. 1790 This eighteenth-century painting by an unknown American artist depicts the first cotton mill built in the United States. Constructed by Samuel Slater on the Blackstone River in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the mill stands next to a waterfall, which supplies the power to run the machinery. While portraying a major industrial innovation, the artist high- lights its pastoral setting. Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA/Bridgeman Images

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic262 1790–1820

everyone who worked in a cotton mill, however, from leaving. At age fourteen, Samuel Slater was hired as an apprentice in an English mill that used a yarn-spinning machine designed by Richard Arkwright. Slater was promoted to supervisor of the factory, but at age twenty-one he sought greater opportunities in America. While working in New York City, he learned that Moses Brown, a wealthy Rhode Island merchant, was eager to develop a machine like Arkwright’s. Funded by Rhode Island investors and assisted by local crafts- men, Slater designed and built a spinning mill in Pawtucket.

The mill opened in December 1790 and began producing yarn, which was then woven into cloth in private shops and homes. By 1815 a series of cotton mills dotted the Paw- tucket River. These factories offered workers, most of whom were the wives and children

of farmers, a steady income, and they ensured employment for weavers in the countryside. They also increased the demand for cotton in New England just as British manufacturers sought new sources of the crop as well.

Ensuring a steady supply of cotton required another technological innova- tion, this one created by Eli Whitney. After graduating from Yale, Whitney

agreed to serve as a private tutor for a planter family in South Carolina. On the ship carry- ing him south, Whitney met the widow Catherine Greene, who invited him to stay at her Mulberry Plantation near Savannah, Georgia. There local planters complained to him about the difficulty of making a profit on cotton. Long-staple cotton, grown in the Sea Islands, yielded enormous profits, but the soil in most of the South could sustain only the short-staple variety, which required hours of intensive labor to separate its sticky green seeds from the cotton fiber.

In 1793, in as little as ten days, Eli Whitney built a machine that could speed the pro- cess of deseeding short-staple cotton. Using mesh screens, rollers, and wire brushes, Whit- ney’s cotton gin could clean as much cotton fiber in one hour as several workers could

Explore

See Document 8.4 for a description of mills in Worcester, Massachusetts.

The Cotton Gin, 1793 This colored lithograph by an anonymous American artist shows Eli Whitney’s cotton gin at the center of complex transactions. Enslaved women and men haul and gin cotton. Meanwhile the planter appears to be bar- gaining with a cotton factor, or agent, who likely wants to purchase his crop for a northern manufacturer. Private Collection/Peter Newark American Pictures/Bridgeman Images

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Remaking America’s Economic Character 263 1790–1820

clean in a day. Recognizing the gin’s value, Whitney received a U.S. patent, but because the machine was easy to duplicate, he never profited from his invention.

Fortunately, Whitney had other ideas that proved more profitable. In June 1798, amid U.S. fears of a war with France, the U.S. government granted him an extraordinary con- tract to produce 4,000 rifles in eighteen months. Adapting the plan of Honoré Blanc, a French mechanic who devised a musket with interchangeable parts, Whitney demon- strated the potential for using machines to produce various parts of a musket, which could then be assembled in mass quantities. With Jefferson’s enthusiastic support, the federal government extended Whitney’s contract, and by 1809 his New Haven factory was turning

Explore

Put It in Context

What does Dwight’s report reveal about the industrial innovations occurring in the northeastern United States in the early nineteenth century?

Few towns in New-England exhibit so uniform an appearance of neatness and taste or contain so great a proportion of good buildings, and so small a proportion of those which are indifferent, as Worcester. There is probably more wealth in it also than in any other, which does not exceed it in dimensions and number of inhabitants. Its trade, considering its inland situation, is believed to be extensive and profitable. . . .

There are in Worcester four grist-mills, four saw-mills, two fulling-mills, and a large paper- mill. The proprietors of the fulling-mills carry on the Clothiers’ business to a great extent; and with skill supposed not to be excelled in the State. Scarlet and blue have for some time been dyed here in a superiour manner.

Document 8.4

On the subject of mills I wish you to observe, once for all, that I shall rarely mention them. There is scarcely a township in New- England which has not a complete set of grist- mills and saw-mills. . . . There is, probably, no country in the world where mill-streams are so numerously and universally dispersed, or grist- mills and saw-mills so universally erected as in New-England. Conveniences of this kind may be said, almost if not quite literally, to be furnished in abundance to every Parish in the Country. To reiterate this fact would be to take very effectual means for wearing out your patience.

Source: Timothy Dwight, Travels; in New-England and New-York (New Haven: Timothy Dwight, 1821), 366–67.

Interpret the Evidence

1. How does Dwight characterize Worcester? What role do the mills play in his assessment?

2. Why does Dwight say he is not going to discuss mills elsewhere in his book?

Timothy Dwight | Visit to Worcester (Massachusetts) Mills, 1821 American industry began in earnest in New England, and mills there garnered great attention from interested observers at home and abroad. In 1821 Timothy Dwight, the president of Yale College, published his impression of various New England towns in his Travels, including the bustling commercial center of Worcester, Massachusetts. After describing the town and the great variety of mills located along the Blackstone River, he notes the ubiquity of such mills throughout New England.

S O L O A N A LY S I S

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic264 1790–1820

out 7,500 guns annually. Whitney’s factory became a model for the American system of manufacturing, in which water-powered machinery and the division of production into several small tasks allowed less skilled workers to produce mass quantities of a particular item. Moreover, the factories developed by Whitney and Slater became training grounds for younger mechanics and inventors who devised improvements in machinery or set out to solve new technological puzzles. Their efforts also transformed the lives of generations of workers—enslaved and free—who planted and picked the cotton, spun the yarn, wove the cloth, and sewed the clothes that cotton gins and spinning mills made possible.

Transforming Household Production. Slater and Whitney were among the most influential American inventors, but both required the assistance and collaboration of other inventors, machinists, and artisans to implement their ideas. The achievement of these enterprising individuals was seen by many Americans as part of a larger spirit of inventiveness and technological ingenuity that characterized U.S. identity. Although many Americans built on foreign ideas and models, a cascade of inventions did appear in the United States between 1790 and 1820.

Cotton gins and steam engines, steamboats and interchangeable parts, gristmills and spinning mills—each of these items and processes was improved over time and led to myr- iad other inventions. For instance, in 1811 Francis Cabot invented a power loom for weav- ing, a necessary step once spinning mills began producing more yarn than hand weavers could handle.

Despite these rapid technological advances, the changes that occurred in the early nineteenth century were more evolutionary than revolutionary. Most political leaders and social commentators viewed gradual improvement as a blessing. For many Americans, the ideal situation consisted of either small mills scattered through the countryside or house- hold enterprises that could supply neighbors with finer cloth, wool cards, or other items that improved home production.

The importance of domestic manufacturing increased after passage of the Embargo Act as imports of cloth and other items fell dramatically. Small factories, like those along the Pawtucket River, increased their output, and so did ordinary housewives. Blacksmiths, carpenters, and wheelwrights busily repaired and improved the spindles, looms, and other equipment that allowed family members to produce more and better cloth from wool, flax, and cotton. New ideas about companionate marriage, which emphasized mutual obliga- tions, may have encouraged husbands and wives to work more closely in these domestic enterprises. While husbands generally carried out the heavier or more skilled parts of home manufacturing, like weaving, wives spun yarn and sewed together sections of cloth into finished goods.

At the same time, daughters, neighbors, and servants remained critical to the produc- tion of household items. In early nineteenth-century Hallowell, Maine, Martha Ballard labored alongside her daughters and a niece, producing cloth and food for domestic con- sumption, while she supplemented her husband’s income as a surveyor by working as a midwife. Yet older forms of mutuality also continued, with neighbors sharing tools and equipment and those with specialized skills assisting neighbors in exchange for items they needed. Perhaps young couples imagined themselves embarking on more egalitarian mar- riages than those of their parents, but most still needed wider networks of support.

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Remaking America’s Economic Character 265 1790–1820

In wealthy households north and south, servants and slaves took on a greater share of domestic labor in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Most female servants in the North were young and unmarried. Some arrived with children in tow or became pregnant while on the job, a mark of the rising rate of out-of-wedlock births following the Revolution. Planters’ wives in the South had fewer worries in this regard because if house- hold slaves became pregnant, their children added to the owner’s labor supply. Moreover, on larger plantations, owners increasingly assigned a few enslaved women to spin, cook, wash clothes, make candles, and wait on table. Plantation mistresses might also hire the wives of small farmers and landless laborers to spin cotton into yarn, weave yarn into cloth, and sew clothing for slaves and children. While mistresses in both regions still engaged in household production, they expanded their roles as domestic managers.

However, most Americans at the turn of the nineteenth century continued to live on family farms, to produce or trade locally to meet their needs, and to use techniques handed down for generations. Yet by 1820, their lives, like those of wealthier Americans, were transformed by the expanding market economy. More and more families sewed clothes with machine-spun thread made from cotton ginned in the American South, worked their fields with newly invented cast-iron plows, and varied their diet by adding items shipped from other regions by steamboat.

Technology, Cotton, and Slaves. Some of the most dramatic technological changes occurred in agriculture, and none was more significant than the cotton gin, which led to the vast expansion of agricultural production and slavery in the South. This in turn fueled regional specialization, ensuring that residents in one area of the nation—the North, South, or West—depended on those in other areas. Southern planters relied on a

growing demand for cotton from northern merchants and manufac- turers. At the same time, planters, merchants, manufacturers, and fac- tory workers became more dependent on western farmers to produce grain and livestock to feed the nation.

As cotton gins spread across the South, cotton and slavery expanded into the interior of many southern states as well as into the lower Mississippi valley. While rice and sugar were also produced in the South, cotton quickly became the most important crop. In 1790 southern farms and plantations produced about 3,000 bales of cotton, each weighing about 300 pounds. By 1820, with the aid of the cotton gin, the South produced more than 330,000 bales annually (Table 8.2). For southern blacks, increased production meant increased burdens. Because seeds could be separated from raw cotton with much greater efficiency, farmers could plant vastly larger quantities of the crop. Although family members, neighbors, and hired hands performed this work on small farms with only a few or no slaves, wealthy plant- ers, with perhaps a dozen slaves, took advantage of rising cotton prices in the early eighteenth century to purchase more slaves.

The dramatic increase in the amount of cotton planted and harvested each year was paralleled by a jump in the size of the slave population. Thus, even as northern states began to abolish

TABLE 8.2 Growth of Cotton Production in the United States, 1790–1830

Year Production in Bales

1790 3,135

1795 16,719

1800 73,145

1805 146,290

1810 177,638

1815 208,986

1820 334,378

1825 532,915

1830 731,452

Source: Lewis Cecil Gray, History of Agriculture in the Southern United States to 1860, vol. 2 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1958).

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic266 1790–1820

the institution, southern planters significantly increased the number of slaves they held. In 1790 there were fewer than 700,000 slaves in the United States. By 1820 there were nearly 1.5 million. Despite this population increase, growing competition for field hands drove up the price of slaves, which roughly doubled between 1795 and 1805.

Although the international slave trade was banned in the United States in 1808, some planters smuggled in women and men from Africa and the Caribbean. Most planters, however, depended on enslaved women to bear more children, increasing the size of their labor force through natural reproduction. In addition, planters in the Deep South—from Georgia and the Carolinas west to Louisiana—began buying slaves from farmers in Mary- land and Virginia, where cotton and slavery were less profitable. Expanding slave markets in New Orleans and Charleston marked the continued importance of this domestic or internal slave trade as cotton moved west.

In the early nineteenth century, most white southerners believed that there was enough land to go around. And the rising price of cotton allowed small farmers to imag- ine they would someday be planters. Some southern Indians also placed their hopes in cotton. Cherokee and Creek Indians cultivated the crop, even purchasing black slaves to increase production. Some Indian villages now welcomed ministers to their communities, hoping that embracing white culture might allow them to retain their current lands. Yet other native residents foresaw the increased pressure for land that cotton cultivation pro- duced and organized to defend themselves from whites’ invasion. Regardless of the poli- cies adopted by Indians, cotton and slavery expanded rapidly into Cherokee- and Creek- controlled lands in the interior of Georgia and South Carolina. And the admission of the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama between 1812 and 1819 marked the rapid spread of southern agriculture farther west.

Enslaved men and women played critical roles in the South’s geographical expansion. Without their labor, neither cotton nor sugar could have become mainstays of the South’s economy. The heavy work of carving out new plantations led most planters to select young slave men and women to move west, breaking apart families in the process. Some slaves resisted their removal and, if forced to go, used their role in the labor process to limit own- ers’ control. Slaves resisted by working slowly, breaking tools, and feigning illness or injury. Other enslaved women and men hid out temporarily as a respite from brutal work regimes or harsh punishments. Still others ran to areas controlled by Indians, hoping for better treatment, or to regions where slavery was no longer legal.

Yet given the power and resources wielded by whites, most slaves had to find ways to improve their lives within the system of bondage. The end of the international slave trade helped blacks in this regard since planters had to depend more on natural reproduction to increase their labor supply. To ensure that slaves lived longer and healthier lives, planters were forced to provide better food, shelter, and clothing. Some slaves gained leverage to fish, hunt, or maintain small gardens to improve their diet. With the birth of more chil- dren, southern blacks also developed more extensive kinship networks, which often allowed other family members to care for children if their parents were compelled to move west. Enslavement was still brutal, but slaves made small gains that improved their chances of survival.

Southern slaves also established their own religious ceremonies, often held in the woods or swamps at night. African Americans were swept up as well in the religious

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Conclusion: New Identities and New Challenges 267 1790–1820

revivals that burned across the southern frontier beginning in the 1790s. Itinerant preach- ers held camp meetings that tapped into deep emotional wells of spirituality. Baptist and Methodist clergy drew free and enslaved blacks as well as white frontier families to their gatherings and encouraged physical displays of spiritual rebirth, offering poor blacks and whites release from the oppressive burdens of daily life through dancing, shaking, and shouting.

Evangelical religion, combined with revolutionary ideals promoted in the United States and Haiti, proved a potent mix, and planters rarely lost sight of the potential dangers this posed to the system of bondage. Outright rebellions occurred only rarely, yet victory in Haiti and Gabriel’s conspiracy in Virginia reminded slaves and owners alike that upris- ings were possible. Clearly, the power of new American identities could not be separated from the dangers embedded in the nation’s oppressive racial history.

REVIEW & RELATE

How did new inventions and infrastructure improvements contribute to the development of the American economy?

Why did slavery expand and become more deeply entrenched in southern society in the early nineteenth century? What fears did this reinforce?

The geographical and economic expansion that marked the period from 1790 to 1820 inspired scientific and technologi- cal advances as well as literary and artistic tributes to a dis- tinctly American identity. For young ambitious men like Parker Cleaveland, Eli Whitney, Washington Irving, and Meriwether Lewis, the opportunities that opened in educa- tion, science, literature, and exploration offered possibilities

for fame and financial success. While Whitney, Irving, and Lewis traveled widely, Cleave- land remained a professor of mathematics, mineralogy, and chemistry at Bowdoin, dying in Brunswick, Maine, in 1858.

Lewis’s efforts to open up the Louisiana Territory transformed the lives of many Amer- icans. Along with the construction of roads, the invention of steamboats, and the introduc- tion of iron plows, his Corps of Discovery opened up new lands for farming and also fueled the rise of western cities. Many white families sought fertile land, abundant wildlife, or opportunities for trade on the frontier. Yet these families often had to purchase land from speculators or compete with wealthy planters. And those who carved out farms might face Indians angered by the constant encroachment of white Americans on their lands.

New opportunities also appeared in eastern towns and cities as investors, inventors, and skilled artisans established factories and improved transportation. White women of middling or elite status could attend female academies, enter marriages based on ideals of companionship and mutual responsibilities, purchase rather than make cotton thread and cloth, and retain servants to perform the heaviest work. Yet these changes occurred gradu- ally and unevenly. And while poorer white women might more easily find jobs in cotton mills or as servants, the pay was low and the hours long.

Conclusion: New Identities and New Challenges

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Chapter 8 The Early Republic268 1790–1820

Transformations in white society introduced even more difficult challenges for Afri- can Americans. Despite the introduction of gradual emancipation in the North and the end of the international slave trade, slavery continued to grow. The invention of the cotton gin ensured the expansion of cotton cultivation into new areas, and many slaves were forced to move west and leave family and friends behind. Enslaved women and men honed means of survival and resistance, but few could imagine a revolution like the one that took place in Haiti.

At the same time, all along the expanding U.S. frontier, American Indians faced con- tinued pressure to leave their lands, embrace white culture, or both. In 1810 Sacagawea, Charbonneau, and their son Baptiste apparently traveled to St. Louis at the invitation of William Clark, who offered to pay for Baptiste’s schooling. Sacagawea left Baptiste in Clark’s care, and it is not clear whether she ever saw her son again. William Clark wrote “Se car ja we au Dead” on the cover of his cash book for 1825–1828, suggesting that she died during those years. By then, the Shoshone and Hidatsa were facing the onslaught of white settlement. They, along with Indians living in areas like Georgia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, continued to resist U.S. expansion and struggled to control the embattled frontier.

Indeed, the United States remained embattled throughout the early years of the republic. From 1790 to 1820, Great Britain, France, and the Barbary States of North Africa constantly challenged U.S. sovereignty from abroad while debates over slavery and con- flicts over Indian lands multiplied at home. Moreover, as federal power expanded under Democratic-Republic rule, some Americans continued to worry about protecting the rights of states and of individuals. The American identities forged in the early republic would be continually tested as new challenges emerged and older conflicts intensified in the following decades.

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KEY TERMS American Colonization Society (ACS), 249

Haitian Revolution, 251

Louisiana Purchase, 253

Corps of Discovery, 254

Judiciary Act, 254

Marbury v. Madison , 255

McCulloch v. Maryland, 256

Embargo Act, 256

National Road, 260

multiplier effect, 261

cotton gin, 262

American system of manufacturing, 264

REVIEW & RELATE 1. How did developments in education, literature, and

the arts contribute to the emergence of a distinctly American identity?

2. How did blacks and American Indians both contribute to and challenge the predominantly white view of American identity?

3. How did the Federalist-dominated courts and the Democratic-Republican president and Congress each contribute to the expansion of the federal government?

4. How did the purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France and international conflicts with France and Britain shape domestic issues in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries?

5. How did new inventions and infrastructure improvements contribute to the development of the American economy?

6. Why did slavery expand and become more deeply entrenched in southern society in the early nineteenth century? What fears did this reinforce?

TIMELINE OF EVENTS 1789 Massachusetts institutes free public

elementary education

1790 Samuel Slater’s spinning mill opens

1790–1820 Cotton production in the South increases from 3,000 to 330,000 bales annually

U.S. slave population rises from 700,000 to 1.5 million

1791–1803 Haitian Revolution

1792–1809 New capital of Washington City constructed

1793 Eli Whitney invents cotton gin

1801 Judiciary Act

U.S. forces challenge Barbary pirates

1803 Louisiana Purchase

Marbury v. Madison

1804–1806 Corps of Discovery explores Louisiana Territory and Pacific Northwest

1807 Robert Fulton launches first successful steamboat

Embargo Act

1810 Population of New York and Philadelphia each exceeds 100,000

1817 American Colonization Society founded

1819 McCulloch v. Maryland

1820 Washington Irving publishes Sketchbook

1828 Noah Webster publishes American Dictionary of the English Language

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CHAPTER 8 REVIEW

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The Corps of Discovery: Paeans to Peace and Instruments of War

fter breakfast, we went on shore to the house of the chief of the second village named Lassel, where we found his chiefs and warriors. They made us a present of about seven bushels of corn, a pair of leggings, a twist of their tobacco, and the seeds of two different species of tobacco. The chief then delivered a speech expressive of his gratitude for the presents and the good counsels which we had given him; his intention of visiting his great father [the president of the United States] but for fear of the Sioux; and requested us to take one of the Ricara chiefs up to the Mandans and negociate a peace between the two nations. . . . After we had answered and explained the magnitude and power of the United States, the three chiefs came with us to the boat. We gave them some sugar, a little salt, and a sun-glass. Two of them left us, and the chief of

had a harder time getting guns, a concern they expressed to Lewis (Document 8.9). While Lewis and Clark advocated peace among Indian nations, one of their most desired trade items was weaponry. When their explorations inspired white settlement in this vast western territory, that weaponry would become more important than ever.

rom 1804 to 1806, the Corps of Discovery mapped vast regions of the West, docu- mented plants and animals, and initiated trade relations with Indian nations. When the Corps built its winter camp at Fort Mandan in October 1804, its members hoped to develop commercial relations with local Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara villages. Most of these tribes had been ravaged by smallpox in the early 1780s and were now subject to raids by more powerful nations in the region. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark hoped to per- suade all of these nations that peaceful relations would benefit them politically and economically. To aid negotiations, the Corps offered gifts to the Indian leaders they encountered (Document 8.5). The Mandan, however, expected more gifts than the expedition could offer. Although Lewis and Clark assured Mandan leaders they would benefit from future trade with and protection from the United States, the Indians had heard such prom- ises before and were wary of giving away vital food as winter descended (Document 8.6).

Worried about surviving the winter, Lewis and Clark finally found an unexpected item to trade with the Mandan. When their men finished building a smithy in December 1804, they discovered that Indians would exchange almost any item for metal hatchets, especially those designed for battle (Doc- uments 8.7 and 8.8).

In April the Corps moved west into present- day Idaho and traded with Shoshone leaders for horses. The Shoshone were engaged in a long and lucrative trade in horses with the Comanche, who had split from the Shoshones, moved south, and developed ties with the Spanish. But the Shoshone

William Clark, Journal | October 12, 1804 As the Corps of Discovery traveled up the Missouri River from St. Louis, they stopped at Indian villages along the way to advocate peace; offer presents from President Jefferson; and learn about local plants, animals, and potential trade items. In his journal entry for October 12, William Clark describes a visit to a Ricara (Arikara) village near where the Corps planned to stay for the winter.

Document 8.5

DOCUMENT PROJECT 8

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the third [village] . . . accompanied us to the Mandans. [T]he Ricaras . . . were originally colonies of

Pawnees, who established themselves on the Missouri. . . . From that situation, a part of the Ricaras emigrated to the neighbourhood of the Mandans, with whom they were then in alliance. The rest of the nation continued near the Chayenne [Cheyenne] till the year 1797, in the course of which, distressed by their wars with the Sioux, they joined their countrymen near the Mandans. Soon after a new war arose between the Ricaras and the Mandans, in consequence of which the former came down the river to their present position. . . .

They [the Ricara] express a disposition to keep at peace with all nations, but they are well armed with fusils [muskets], and being much under the influence of the Sioux, who exchanged the goods which they got from the British for Ricara corn, their minds are sometimes poisoned and they cannot always be depended on.

Source: William Clark Journal, October 12, 1804, History of the Expeditions of Captains Lewis and Clark, 1804-5-6, Reprinted from the Edition of 1814, with Introduction and Index by James K. Hosmer (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902), 1:110–11, 114.

distributed many presents; but most of the Chiefs did not accept any thing from them. Some time after Captain Lewis with three Interpreters paid a visit to the Gros Ventres [Hidatsa] Village. . . . [N]ext morning he came to the village where I was—and observed to me that he was not very graciously received at the upper Village. . . .

After haranguing the Indians and explaining to them the purport of his [Lewis’s] expedition to the Westward, several of them accepted clothing—but notwithstanding they could not be reconciled to like these strangers as they called them:—“Had these Whites come amongst us, Said the Chiefs, with charitable views they would have loaded their Great Boat with necessaries [trade items]. It is true they have ammunition but they prefer throwing it away idly [shooting in the air] than sparing a shot of it to a poor Mandane.” . . . “Had I these White warriors in the upper plains, said the Gros Ventres Chief, my young men on horseback would soon do for them, as they would do for so many wolves—for, continued he, there are only two sensible men among them— the worker of Iron, and the mender of Guns.”

The American Gentlemen gave flags and medals to the Chiefs on condition that they should not go to war unless the enemy attacked them in their Villages. Yet the Chief of the wolves, whose brother had been killed in the fall previous to our arrival, went soon after with a party of fifty men to revenge his death.

Source: W. Raymond Wood and Thomas D. Thiessen, eds., Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains: Canadian Traders among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738–1818 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), 232–33.

Charles McKenzie | Narrative of a Fur Trader, November 1804 Charles McKenzie was a Scotsman working as a clerk for the Hudson Bay Company. He arrived with six traders at a Hidatsa village in November 1804. Over time, McKenzie adopted Indian dress, married an Indian woman, and became an advocate for Indian concerns. Here he recounts Lewis’s frustration in his efforts to gain favor with local Indians as well as Mandan concerns about the Corps’ lack of generosity.

Document 8.6

ere we also found a party of forty Americans under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark exploring a passage by the Mississouri [Missouri] to the Pacific Ocean—they came up the River in a Boat of twenty oars accompanied by two Peroques [open boats or canoes]. Their fortifications for winter Quarters were already complete—they had held a council with the Mandanes, and

271

William Clark | Journal, November 18, 1804 By November 1804, the Corps had built and settled into Fort Mandan, at the convergence of the Missouri and Knife Rivers, for the winter. Lewis and Clark became increasingly aware that their trade with particular groups, like the Mandans, might shift the balance of power in the region. But given the extended journey ahead, they were limited in what goods they could give or trade with local Indians even as they sought to reassure them of U.S. support.

Document 8.7

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William Clark | Journal, January 28, 1805, and Meriwether Lewis, Journal, February 1, 1805 By early 1805 it was clear to Lewis and Clark that metal goods, especially axes or hatchets, were the most valuable means of obtaining the corn and other items they needed from the Mandans and neighboring Indians. These two short entries, by Clark and then Lewis, describe the value of the trade in hatchets to the Corps and their continued commitment to peace among Indian nations.

Document 8.8

272

o-day we had a cold windy morning; the Black Cat [a Mandan chief] came to see us, and occupied us for a long time with questions on the usages [customs] of our country. He mentioned that a council had been held yesterday to deliberate on the state of their affairs. It seems that not long ago a party of Sioux fell in with some horses belonging to the Minnetarees and carried them off, but in their flight they were met by some Assiniboins, who killed the Sioux and kept the horses. A Frenchman, too, who had lived many years among the Mandans, was lately killed on his route to the British factory [trading post] on the Assiniboin . . . , all of which being discussed, the council decided that they would not resent the recent insults from the Assiniboins . . . until they had seen whether we had deceived them or not in our promises of furnishing them with arms and ammunition. They had been disappointed in their hopes of receiving them from Mr. Evans, and were afraid that we, too, like him, might tell them what was not true. We advised them to continue at peace, that supplies of every kind would no doubt arrive for them, but that time was necessary to organize the trade. The fact is that the Assiniboins treat the Mandans as the Sioux do the Ricaras; by their vicinity to the British they get all the supplies, which they withhold or give at pleasure to the remoter Indians; the consequence is that, however badly treated, the Mandans and Ricaras are very slow to retaliate lest they should lose their trade altogether.

Source: William Clark Journal, November 18, 1804, History of the Expeditions of Captains Lewis and Clark, 1804-5-6, Reprinted from the Edition of 1814, with Introduction and Index by James K. Hosmer (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902), 1:136–37.

American Philosophical Society

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other, thus leaving them defenceless and an easy prey to their bloodthirsty neighbours to the East of them, who being in possession of fire arms hunt them up and murder them without rispect to sex or age and plunder them of their horses on all occasions. They told me that to avoid their enemies who were eternally harrassing them that they were obliged to remain in the interior of these mountains at least two thirds of the year where the[y] suffered as we then saw great heardships for the want of food sometimes living for weeks without meat and only a little fish roots and berries. But this added Câmeahwait, with his ferce eyes and lank jaws grown meager for the want of food, would not be the case if we had guns, we could then live in the country of buffaloe and eat as our enimies do and not be compelled to hide ourselves in these mountains and live on roots and berries as the bear do. We do not fear our enimies when placed on an equal footing with them. I told them that the Minnetares Mandans & Recares of the Missouri had promised us to desist from making war on them & that we would indevour to find the means of making the Minnetares . . . or as they call them Pahkees desist from waging war against them also. That after our finally returning to our homes towards the rising sun whitemen would come to them with an abundance of guns and every other article necessary to their defence and comfort, and that they would be enabled to supply themselves with these articles on reasonable terms in exchange for the skins of the beaver Otter and Ermin so abundant in their country. They expressed great pleasure at this information and said they had been long anxious to see the whitemen that traded guns; and that we might rest assured of their friendship and that they would do whatever we wished them.

Source: Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1804–1808 (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1904), 383–84.

Meriwether Lewis | Journal, August 20, 1805 The Corps was eager to encounter the Shoshone nation in hopes of getting horses and aid in crossing the mountains and the Columbia River. Sacagawea had been raised as a Shoshone, and her brother Cameahwait was now a Shoshone chief. He and Sacagawea were shocked and excited to see each other again, and Lewis was moved by their reunion. But he was more interested in the relations between the Shoshone and tribes to the east as well as Spanish traders to the south.

Document 8.9

can discover that these people are by no means friendly to the Spaniards. Their complaint is, that the Spaniards will not let them have fire arms and amunition, that they put them off by telling them that if they suffer them to have guns they will kill each

I 273

28th January

Attempt to cut through the ice to get our Boat and Canoes out without success. Several Indians here wishing to get war hatchets made [image of one drawn here]. The man sick yesterday is getting well Mr. Jessome [Jessaume], our interpreter was taken very unwell this evening. Warm day.

1st February

A cold, windy day. . . . One of the Minnetaree chiefs . . . came to see us and procure a war hatchet; he also requested that we would suffer him to go to war against the Sioux and Ricaras, who had killed a Mandan some time ago; this we refused for reasons which we explained to him. He acknowledged that we were right, and promised to open his ears to our counsel.

Source: William Clark Journal, January 28, 1805, Codex C: 158 American Philosophical Society, Courtesy of the American Philosophical Society Library; and Meriwether Lewis Journal, February 1, 1805, History of the Expeditions of Captains Lewis and Clark, 1804-5-6, Reprinted from the Edition of 1814, with Introduction and Index by James K. Hosmer (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1902), 1:168.

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Put It in Context What were the most significant problems faced by Indians as more European and American explorers and traders entered the region explored by the Corps of Discovery?

How did the Corps of Discovery influence relations among Indian nations in the West and with the United States?

Interpret the Evidence 1. How do European traders and American explorers view the connection

between trade with and peaceful relations among Indian nations (Documents 8.5 and 8.6)?

2. After only a month living near the Mandan, how does William Clark describe relations among Indian nations in the region (Document 8.7)?

3. What are the effects of Lewis and Clark’s willingness to trade war hatchets for food, and how does this fit with their desire for peace among the Mandan, Arikara, and other Indian nations (Documents 8.8 and 8.9)?

4. What does Lewis’s willingness to promise guns to the Shoshone suggest about the Corps’ purpose as it encounters Indian nations living in the Spanish commercial sphere (Document 8.9)?

5. Although these sources were written by white men, what can they tell us about Indian attitudes toward European traders and American explorers and their relations with other Indian nations (Documents 8.5 to 8.9)?

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