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I. Introduction | II. Shays’ Rebellion | III. The Constitutional Convention | IV. Ratifying the Consti-

tution | V. Rights and Compromises | VI. Hamilton’s Financial System | VII. The Whiskey Rebellion

and Jay’s Treaty | VIII. The French Revolution and the Limits of Liberty | IX. Religious Freedom | X.

The Election of 1800 | XI. Conclusion | XII. Primary Sources | XIII. Reference Material

THE AMERICAN YAWP

6. A New Nation

“The Federal Pillars,” from The Massachusetts Centinel, August 2, 1789. Library of Congress.

*The American Yawp is an evolving, collaborative text. Please click here to improve this chapter.*

I. Introduction

On July 4, 1788, Philadelphians turned out for a “grand federal procession” in honor of the new na-

tional constitution. Workers in various trades and professions demonstrated. Blacksmiths carted

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around a working forge, on which they symbolically beat swords into farm tools. Potters proudly

carried a sign paraphrasing from the Bible, “The potter hath power over his clay,” linking God’s

power with an artisan’s work and a citizen’s control over the country. Christian clergymen mean-

while marched arm-in-arm with Jewish rabbis. The grand procession represented what many Ameri-

cans hoped the United States would become: a diverse but cohesive, prosperous nation.

Over the next few years, Americans would celebrate more of these patriotic holidays. In April 1789,

for example, thousands gathered in New York to see George Washington take the presidential oath

of o�ce. That November, Washington called his fellow citizens to celebrate with a day of thanksgiv-

ing, particularly for “the peaceable and rational manner” in which the government had been estab-

lished.

But the new nation was never as cohesive as its champions had hoped. Although the o�cials of the

new federal government—and the people who supported it—placed great emphasis on unity and

cooperation, the country was often anything but uni�ed. The Constitution itself had been a contro-

versial document adopted to strengthen the government so that it could withstand internal con�icts.

Whatever the later celebrations, the new nation had looked to the future with uncertainty. Less than

two years before the national celebrations of 1788 and 1789, the United States had faced the threat

of collapse.

II. Shays’ Rebellion

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Daniel Shays became a divisive �gure, to some a violent rebel seeking to upend the new American government, to others an up- holder of the true revolutionary virtues Shays and others fought for. This contemporary depiction of Shays and his accomplice Job Shattuck portrays them in the latter light as rising “illustrious from the Jail.” Unidenti�ed artist, Daniel Shays and Job Shat- tuck, 1787. Wikimedia.

In 1786 and 1787, a few years after the Revolution ended, thousands of farmers in western Massa-

chusetts were struggling under a heavy burden of debt. Their problems were made worse by weak

local and national economies. Many political leaders saw both the debt and the struggling economy

as a consequence of the Articles of Confederation, which provided the federal government with no

way to raise revenue and did little to create a cohesive nation out of the various states. The farmers

wanted the Massachusetts government to protect them from their creditors, but the state supported

the lenders instead. As creditors threatened to foreclose on their property, many of these farmers, in-

cluding Revolutionary War veterans, took up arms.

Led by a fellow veteran named Daniel Shays, these armed men, the “Shaysites,” resorted to tactics

like the patriots had used before the Revolution, forming blockades around courthouses to keep

judges from issuing foreclosure orders. These protesters saw their cause and their methods as an ex-

tension of the “Spirit of 1776”; they were protecting their rights and demanding redress for the

people’s grievances.

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Governor James Bowdoin, however, saw the Shaysites as rebels who wanted to rule the government

through mob violence. He called up thousands of militiamen to disperse them. A former Revolu-

tionary general, Benjamin Lincoln, led the state force, insisting that Massachusetts must prevent “a

state of anarchy, confusion and slavery.” In January 1787, Lincoln’s militia arrested more than one

thousand Shaysites and reopened the courts.

Daniel Shays and other leaders were indicted for treason, and several were sentenced to death, but

eventually Shays and most of his followers received pardons. Their protest, which became known as

Shays’ Rebellion, generated intense national debate. While some Americans, like Thomas Je�erson,

thought “a little rebellion now and then” helped keep the country free, others feared the nation was

sliding toward anarchy and complained that the states could not maintain control. For nationalists

like James Madison of Virginia, Shays’ Rebellion was a prime example of why the country needed a

strong central government. “Liberty,” Madison warned, “may be endangered by the abuses of liberty

as well as the abuses of power.”

III. The Constitutional Convention

The uprising in Massachusetts convinced leaders around the country to act. After years of goading

by James Madison and other nationalists, delegates from twelve of the thirteen states met at the

Pennsylvania state house in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Only Rhode Island declined to

send a representative. The delegates arrived at the convention with instructions to revise the Articles

of Confederation.

The biggest problem the convention needed to solve was the federal government’s inability to levy

taxes. That weakness meant that the burden of paying back debt from the Revolutionary War fell on

the states. The states, in turn, found themselves beholden to the lenders who had bought up their

war bonds. That was part of why Massachusetts had chosen to side with its wealthy bondholders

over poor western farmers.

James Madison, however, had no intention of simply revising the Articles of Confederation. He in-

tended to produce a completely new national constitution. In the preceding year, he had completed

two extensive research projects—one on the history of government in the United States, the other

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on the history of republics around the world. He used this research as the basis for a proposal he

brought with him to Philadelphia. It came to be called the Virginia Plan, named after Madison’s

home state.

James Madison was a central �gure in the recon�guration of the national government. Madison’s Virginia Plan was a guiding document in the formation of a new government under the Constitution. John Vanderlyn, Portrait of James Madison, 1816. Wikimedia.

The Virginia Plan was daring. Classical learning said that a republican form of government required

a small and homogenous state: the Roman republic, or a small country like Denmark, for example.

Citizens who were too far apart or too di�erent could not govern themselves successfully. Conven-

tional wisdom said the United States needed to have a very weak central government, which should

simply represent the states on certain matters they had in common. Otherwise, power should stay at

the state or local level. But Madison’s research had led him in a di�erent direction. He believed it was

possible to create “an extended republic” encompassing a diversity of people, climates, and customs.

The Virginia Plan, therefore, proposed that the United States should have a strong federal govern-

ment. It was to have three branches—legislative, executive, and judicial—with power to act on any

issues of national concern. The legislature, or Congress, would have two houses, in which every state

would be represented according to its population size or tax base. The national legislature would

have veto power over state laws.

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Other delegates to the convention generally agreed with Madison that the Articles of Confederation

had failed. But they did not agree on what kind of government should replace them. In particular,

they disagreed about the best method of representation in the new Congress. Representation was an

important issue that in�uenced a host of other decisions, including deciding how the national execu-

tive branch should work, what speci�c powers the federal government should have, and even what to

do about the divisive issue of slavery.

For more than a decade, each state had enjoyed a single vote in the Continental Congress. Small

states like New Jersey and Delaware wanted to keep things that way. The Connecticut delegate

Roger Sherman, furthermore, argued that members of Congress should be appointed by the state

legislatures. Ordinary voters, Sherman said, lacked information, were “constantly liable to be misled”

and “should have as little to do as may be” about most national decisions. Large states, however,

preferred the Virginia Plan, which would give their citizens far more power over the legislative

branch. James Wilson of Pennsylvania argued that since the Virginia Plan would vastly increase the

powers of the national government, representation should be drawn as directly as possible from the

public. No government, he warned, “could long subsist without the con�dence of the people.” )

Ultimately, Roger Sherman suggested a compromise. Congress would have a lower house, the House

of Representatives, in which members were assigned according to each state’s population, and an

upper house, which became the Senate, in which each state would have one vote. This proposal, af-

ter months of debate, was adopted in a slightly altered form as the Great Compromise: each state

would have two senators, who could vote independently. In addition to establishing both types of

representation, this compromise also counted enslaved people as three �fths of a person for represen-

tation and tax purposes.

The delegates took even longer to decide on the form of the national executive branch. Should exec-

utive power be in the hands of a committee or a single person? How should its o�ceholders be cho-

sen? On June 1, James Wilson moved that the national executive power reside in a single person.

Coming only four years after the American Revolution, that proposal was extremely contentious; it

conjured up images of an elected monarchy. The delegates also worried about how to protect the

executive branch from corruption or undue control. They endlessly debated these questions, and

not until early September did they decide the president would be elected by a special electoral

college.

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In the end, the Constitutional Convention proposed a government unlike any other, combining ele-

ments copied from ancient republics and English political tradition but making some limited demo-

cratic innovations—all while trying to maintain a delicate balance between national and state

sovereignty. It was a complicated and highly controversial scheme.

IV. Ratifying the Constitution

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention assembled, argued, and �nally agreed in this room, styled in the same manner as dur- ing the Convention. Photograph of the Assembly Room, Independence Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Wikimedia. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported.

The convention voted to send its proposed Constitution to Congress, which was then sitting in

New York, with a cover letter from George Washington. The plan for adopting the new Constitu-

tion, however, required approval from special state rati�cation conventions, not just Congress. Dur-

ing the rati�cation process, critics of the Constitution organized to persuade voters in the di�erent

states to oppose it.

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Importantly, the Constitutional Convention had voted down a proposal from Virginia’s George

Mason, the author of Virginia’s state Declaration of Rights, for a national bill of rights. This omis-

sion became a rallying point for opponents of the document. Many of these Anti-Federalists argued

that without such a guarantee of speci�c rights, American citizens risked losing their personal liberty

to the powerful federal government. The pro-rati�cation Federalists, on the other hand, argued that

including a bill of rights was not only redundant but dangerous; it could limit future citizens from

adding new rights.

Citizens debated the merits of the Constitution in newspaper articles, letters, sermons, and co�ee-

house quarrels across America. Some of the most famous, and most important, arguments came

from Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison in the Federalist Papers, which were pub-

lished in various New York newspapers in 1787 and 1788. The �rst crucial vote came at the begin-

ning of 1788 in Massachusetts. At �rst, the Anti-Federalists at the Massachusetts ratifying conven-

tion probably had the upper hand, but after weeks of debate, enough delegates changed their votes

to narrowly approve the Constitution. But they also approved a number of proposed amendments,

which were to be submitted to the �rst Congress. This pattern—ratifying the Constitution but at-

taching proposed amendments—was followed by other state conventions.

The most high-pro�le convention was held in Richmond, Virginia, in June 1788, when Federalists

like James Madison, Edmund Randolph, and John Marshall squared o� against equally in�uential

Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry and George Mason. Virginia was America’s most populous state,

it had produced some of the country’s highest-pro�le leaders, and the success of the new govern-

ment rested upon its cooperation. After nearly a month of debate, Virginia voted 89 to 79 in favor of

rati�cation.

On July 2, 1788, Congress announced that a majority of states had rati�ed the Constitution and

that the document was now in e�ect. Yet this did not mean the debates were over. North Carolina,

New York, and Rhode Island had not completed their rati�cation conventions, and Anti-Federalists

still argued that the Constitution would lead to tyranny. The New York convention would ratify the

Constitution by just three votes, and �nally Rhode Island would ratify it by two votes—a full year

after George Washington was inaugurated as president.

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V. Rights and Compromises

Although debates continued, Washington’s election as president cemented the Constitution’s au-

thority. By 1793, the term Anti-Federalist would be essentially meaningless. Yet the debates pro-

duced a piece of the Constitution that seems irreplaceable today. Ten amendments were added in

1791. Together, they constitute the Bill of Rights. James Madison, against his original wishes, sup-

ported these amendments as an act of political compromise and necessity. He had won election to

the House of Representatives only by promising his Virginia constituents such a list of rights.

There was much the Bill of Rights did not cover. Women found no special protections or guarantee

of a voice in government. Many states continued to restrict voting only to men who owned signi�-

cant amounts of property. And slavery not only continued to exist; it was condoned and protected

by the Constitution.

Of all the compromises that formed the Constitution, perhaps none would be more important than

the compromise over the slave trade. Americans generally perceived the transatlantic slave trade as

more violent and immoral than slavery itself. Many northerners opposed it on moral grounds. But

they also understood that letting southern states import more Africans would increase their political

power. The Constitution counted each Black individual as three �fths of a person for purposes of

representation, so in districts with many enslaved people, the white voters had extra in�uence. On

the other hand, the states of the Upper South also welcomed a ban on the Atlantic trade because

they already had a surplus of enslaved laborers. Banning importation meant enslavers in Virginia and

Maryland could get higher prices when they sold their enslaved laborers to states like South Carolina

and Georgia that were dependent on a continued slave trade.

New England and the Deep South agreed to what was called a “dirty compromise” at the Constitu-

tional Convention in 1787. New Englanders agreed to include a constitutional provision that pro-

tected the foreign slave trade for twenty years; in exchange, South Carolina and Georgia delegates

had agreed to support a constitutional clause that made it easier for Congress to pass commercial leg-

islation. As a result, the Atlantic slave trade resumed until 1808 when it was outlawed for three rea-

sons. First, Britain was also in the process of outlawing the slave trade in 1807, and the United States

did not want to concede any moral high ground to its rival. Second, the Haitian Revolution (1791–

1804), a successful slave revolt against French colonial rule in the West Indies, had changed the stakes

in the debate. The image of thousands of armed Black revolutionaries terri�ed white Americans.

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Third, the Haitian Revolution had ended France’s plans to expand its presence in the Americas, so

in 1803, the United States had purchased the Louisiana Territory from the French at a �re-sale price.

This massive new territory, which had doubled the size of the United States, had put the question of

slavery’s expansion at the top of the national agenda. Many white Americans, including President

Thomas Je�erson, thought that ending the external slave trade and dispersing the domestic slave

population would keep the United States a white man’s republic and perhaps even lead to the disap-

pearance of slavery.

The ban on the slave trade, however, lacked e�ective enforcement measures and funding. Moreover,

instead of freeing illegally imported Africans, the act left their fate to the individual states, and many

of those states simply sold intercepted enslaved people at auction. Thus, the ban preserved the logic

of property ownership in human beings. The new federal government protected slavery as much as

it expanded democratic rights and privileges for white men.

VI. Hamilton’s Financial System

Alexander Hamilton saw America’s future as a metropolitan, commercial, industrial society, in contrast to Thomas Je�erson’s nation of small farmers. While both men had the ear of President Washington, Hamilton’s vision proved most appealing and en- during. John Trumbull, Portrait of Alexander Hamilton, 1806. Wikimedia.

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President George Washington’s cabinet choices re�ected continuing political tensions over the size

and power of the federal government. The vice president was John Adams, and Washington chose

Alexander Hamilton to be his secretary of the treasury. Both men wanted an active government that

would promote prosperity by supporting American industry. However, Washington chose Thomas

Je�erson to be his secretary of state, and Je�erson was committed to restricting federal power and

preserving an economy based on agriculture. Almost from the beginning, Washington struggled to

reconcile the Federalist and Republican (or Democratic-Republican) factions within his own admin-

istration.

Alexander Hamilton believed that self-interest was the “most powerful incentive of human actions.”

Self-interest drove humans to accumulate property, and that e�ort created commerce and industry.

According to Hamilton, government had important roles to play in this process. First, the state

should protect private property from theft. Second, according to Hamilton, the state should use hu-

man “passions” and “make them subservient to the public good.” In other words, a wise govern-

ment would harness its citizens’ desire for property so that both private individuals and the state

would bene�t.

Hamilton, like many of his contemporary statesmen, did not believe the state should ensure an equal

distribution of property. Inequality was understood as “the great & fundamental distinction in Soci-

ety,” and Hamilton saw no reason why this should change. Instead, Hamilton wanted to tie the eco-

nomic interests of wealthy Americans, or “monied men,” to the federal government’s �nancial

health. If the rich needed the government, then they would direct their energies to making sure it re-

mained solvent.

Hamilton, therefore, believed that the federal government must be “a Repository of the Rights of

the wealthy.” As the nation’s �rst secretary of the treasury, he proposed an ambitious �nancial plan

to achieve just that.

The �rst part of Hamilton’s plan involved federal “assumption” of state debts, which were mostly

left over from the Revolutionary War. The federal government would assume responsibility for the

states’ unpaid debts, which totaled about $25 million. Second, Hamilton wanted Congress to create

a bank—a Bank of the United States.

The goal of these proposals was to link federal power and the country’s economic vitality. Under the

assumption proposal, the states’ creditors (people who owned state bonds or promissory notes)

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would turn their old notes in to the treasury and receive new federal notes of the same face value.

Hamilton foresaw that these bonds would circulate like money, acting as “an engine of business, and

instrument of industry and commerce.” This part of his plan, however, was controversial for two

reasons.

First, many taxpayers objected to paying the full face value on old notes, which had fallen in market

value. Often the current holders had purchased them from the original creditors for pennies on the

dollar. To pay them at full face value, therefore, would mean rewarding speculators at taxpayer ex-

pense. Hamilton countered that government debts must be honored in full, or else citizens would

lose all trust in the government. Second, many southerners objected that they had already paid their

outstanding state debts, so federal assumption would mean forcing them to pay again for the debts

of New Englanders. Nevertheless, President Washington and Congress both accepted Hamilton’s

argument. By the end of 1794, 98 percent of the country’s domestic debt had been converted into

new federal bonds.

Hamilton’s plan for a Bank of the United States, similarly, won congressional approval despite

strong opposition. Thomas Je�erson and other Republicans argued that the plan was unconstitu-

tional; the Constitution did not authorize Congress to create a bank. Hamilton, however, argued

that the bank was not only constitutional but also important for the country’s prosperity. The Bank

of the United States would ful�ll several needs. It would act as a convenient depository for federal

funds. It would print paper banknotes backed by specie (gold or silver). Its agents would also help

control in�ation by periodically taking state bank notes to their banks of origin and demanding

specie in exchange, limiting the amount of notes the state banks printed. Furthermore, it would give

wealthy people a vested interest in the federal government’s �nances. The government would control

just 20 percent of the bank’s stock; the other eighty percent would be owned by private investors.

Thus, an “intimate connexion” between the government and wealthy men would bene�t both, and

this connection would promote American commerce.

In 1791, therefore, Congress approved a twenty-year charter for the Bank of the United States. The

bank’s stocks, together with federal bonds, created over $70 million in new �nancial instruments.

These spurred the formation of securities markets, which allowed the federal government to borrow

more money and underwrote the rapid spread of state-charted banks and other private business cor-

porations in the 1790s. For Federalists, this was one of the major purposes of the federal govern-

ment. For opponents who wanted a more limited role for industry, however, or who lived on the

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frontier and lacked access to capital, Hamilton’s system seemed to reinforce class boundaries and

give the rich inordinate power over the federal government.

Hamilton’s plan, furthermore, had another highly controversial element. In order to pay what it

owed on the new bonds, the federal government needed reliable sources of tax revenue. In 1791,

Hamilton proposed a federal excise tax on the production, sale, and consumption of a number of

goods, including whiskey.

VII. The Whiskey Rebellion and Jay’s Treaty

Grain was the most valuable cash crop for many American farmers. In the West, selling grain to a lo-

cal distillery for alcohol production was typically more pro�table than shipping it over the Ap-

palachians to eastern markets. Hamilton’s whiskey tax thus placed a special burden on western farm-

ers. It seemed to divide the young republic in half—geographically between the East and West, eco-

nomically between merchants and farmers, and culturally between cities and the countryside.

In the fall of 1791, sixteen men in western Pennsylvania, disguised in women’s clothes, assaulted a

tax collector named Robert Johnson. They tarred and feathered him, and the local deputy marshals

seeking justice met similar fates. They were robbed and beaten, whipped and �ogged, tarred and

feathered, and tied up and left for dead. The rebel farmers also adopted other protest methods from

the Revolution and Shays’ Rebellion, writing local petitions and erecting liberty poles. For the next

two years, tax collections in the region dwindled.

Then, in July 1794, groups of armed farmers attacked federal marshals and tax collectors, burning

down at least two tax collectors’ homes. At the end of the month, an armed force of about seven

thousand, led by the radical attorney David Bradford, robbed the U.S. mail and gathered about eight

miles east of Pittsburgh. President Washington responded quickly.

First, Washington dispatched a committee of three distinguished Pennsylvanians to meet with the

rebels and try to bring about a peaceful resolution. Meanwhile, he gathered an army of thirteen

thousand militiamen in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. On September 19, Washington became the only sit-

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ting president to lead troops in the �eld, though he quickly turned over the army to the command of

Henry Lee, a Revolutionary hero and the current governor of Virginia.

As the federal army moved westward, the farmers scattered. Hoping to make a dramatic display of

federal authority, Alexander Hamilton oversaw the arrest and trial of a number of rebels. Many were

released because of a lack of evidence, and most of those who remained, including two men sen-

tenced to death for treason, were soon pardoned by the president. The Whiskey Rebellion had

shown that the federal government was capable of quelling internal unrest. But it also demonstrated

that some citizens, especially poor westerners, viewed it as their enemy.

Around the same time, another national issue also aroused �erce protest. Along with his vision of a

strong �nancial system, Hamilton also had a vision of a nation busily engaged in foreign trade. In his

mind, that meant pursuing a friendly relationship with one nation in particular: Great Britain.

America’s relationship with Britain since the end of the Revolution had been tense, partly because of

warfare between the British and French. Their naval war threatened American shipping, and the im-

pressment of men into Britain’s navy terrorized American sailors. American trade could be risky and

expensive, and impressment threatened seafaring families. Nevertheless, President Washington was

conscious of American weakness and was determined not to take sides. In April 1793, he o�cially

declared that the United States would remain neutral. With his blessing, Hamilton’s political ally

John Jay, who was currently serving as chief justice of the Supreme Court, sailed to London to nego-

tiate a treaty that would satisfy both Britain and the United States.

Je�erson and Madison strongly opposed these negotiations. They mistrusted Britain and saw the

treaty as the American state favoring Britain over France. The French had recently overthrown their

own monarchy, and Republicans thought the United States should be glad to have the friendship of

a new revolutionary state. They also suspected that a treaty with Britain would favor northern mer-

chants and manufacturers over the agricultural South.

In November 1794, despite their misgivings, John Jay signed a “treaty of amity, commerce, and navi-

gation” with the British. Jay’s Treaty, as it was commonly called, required Britain to abandon its mili-

tary positions in the Northwest Territory (especially Fort Detroit, Fort Mackinac, and Fort Niagara)

by 1796. Britain also agreed to compensate American merchants for their losses. The United States,

in return, agreed to treat Britain as its most prized trade partner, which meant tacitly supporting

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Britain in its current con�ict with France. Unfortunately, Jay had failed to secure an end to impress-

ment.

For Federalists, this treaty was a signi�cant accomplishment. Jay’s Treaty gave the United States, a

relatively weak power, the ability to stay o�cially neutral in European wars, and it preserved Ameri-

can prosperity by protecting trade. For Je�erson’s Republicans, however, the treaty was proof of

Federalist treachery. The Federalists had sided with a monarchy against a republic, and they had sub-

mitted to British in�uence in American a�airs without even ending impressment. In Congress, de-

bate over the treaty transformed the Federalists and Republicans from temporary factions into two

distinct (though still loosely organized) political parties.

VIII. The French Revolution and the Limits of Liberty

The mounting body count of the French Revolution included that of the queen and king, who were beheaded in a public cere- mony in early 1793, as depicted in the engraving. While Americans disdained the concept of monarchy, the execution of King Louis XVI was regarded by many Americans as an abomination, an indication of the chaos and savagery reigning in France at the time. Charles Monnet (artist), Antoine-Jean Duclos and Isidore-Stanislas Helman (engravers), Day of 21 January 1793 the death of Louis Capet on the Place de la Révolution, 1794. Wikimedia.

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In part, the Federalists were turning toward Britain because they feared the most radical forms of

democratic thought. In the wake of Shays’ Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, and other internal

protests, Federalists sought to preserve social stability. The course of the French Revolution seemed

to justify their concerns.

In 1789, news had arrived in America that the French had revolted against their king. Most Ameri-

cans imagined that liberty was spreading from America to Europe, carried there by the returning

French heroes who had taken part in the American Revolution.

Initially, nearly all Americans had praised the French Revolution. Towns all over the country hosted

speeches and parades on July 14 to commemorate the day it began. Women had worn neoclassical

dress to honor republican principles, and men had pinned revolutionary cockades to their hats. John

Randolph, a Virginia planter, named two of his favorite horses Jacobin and Sans-Culotte after

French revolutionary factions.

In April 1793, a new French ambassador, “Citizen” Edmond-Charles Genêt, arrived in the United

States. During his tour of several cities, Americans greeted him with wild enthusiasm. Citizen Genêt

encouraged Americans to act against Spain, a British ally, by attacking its colonies of Florida and

Louisiana. When President Washington refused, Genêt threatened to appeal to the American people

directly. In response, Washington demanded that France recall its diplomat. In the meantime, how-

ever, Genêt’s faction had fallen from power in France. Knowing that a return home might cost him

his head, he decided to remain in America.

Genêt’s intuition was correct. A radical coalition of revolutionaries had seized power in France. They

initiated a bloody purge of their enemies, the Reign of Terror. As Americans learned about Genêt’s

impropriety and the mounting body count in France, many began to have second thoughts about

the French Revolution.

Americans who feared that the French Revolution was spiraling out of control tended to become

Federalists. Those who remained hopeful about the revolution tended to become Republicans. Not

deterred by the violence, Thomas Je�erson declared that he would rather see “half the earth deso-

lated” than see the French Revolution fail. “Were there but an Adam and an Eve left in every coun-

try, and left free,” he wrote, “it would be better than as it now is.” Meanwhile, the Federalists

sought closer ties with Britain.

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Despite the political rancor, in late 1796 there came one sign of hope: the United States peacefully

elected a new president. For now, as Washington stepped down and executive power changed hands,

the country did not descend into the anarchy that many leaders feared.

The new president was John Adams, Washington’s vice president. Adams was less beloved than the

old general, and he governed a deeply divided nation. The foreign crisis also presented him with a

major test.

In response to Jay’s Treaty, the French government authorized its vessels to attack American ship-

ping. To resolve this, President Adams sent envoys to France in 1797. The French insulted these

diplomats. Some o�cials, whom the Americans code-named X, Y, and Z in their correspondence,

hinted that negotiations could begin only after the Americans o�ered a bribe. When the story be-

came public, this XYZ A�air infuriated American citizens. Dozens of towns wrote addresses to Pres-

ident Adams, pledging him their support against France. Many people seemed eager for war. “Mil-

lions for defense,” toasted South Carolina representative Robert Goodloe Harper, “but not one cent

for tribute.”

By 1798, the people of Charleston watched the ocean’s horizon apprehensively because they feared

the arrival of the French navy at any moment. Many people now worried that the same ships that

had aided Americans during the Revolutionary War might discharge an invasion force on their

shores. Some southerners were sure that this force would consist of Black troops from France’s Car-

ibbean colonies, who would attack the southern states and cause their enslaved laborers to revolt.

Many Americans also worried that France had covert agents in the country. In the streets of Charles-

ton, armed bands of young men searched for French disorganizers. Even the little children prepared

for the looming con�ict by �ghting with sticks.

Meanwhile, during the crisis, New Englanders were some of the most outspoken opponents of

France. In 1798, they found a new reason for Francophobia. An in�uential Massachusetts minister,

Jedidiah Morse, announced to his congregation that the French Revolution had been hatched in a

conspiracy led by a mysterious anti-Christian organization called the Illuminati. The story was a

hoax, but rumors of Illuminati in�ltration spread throughout New England like wild�re, adding a

new dimension to the foreign threat.

Against this backdrop of fear, the French Quasi-War, as it would come to be known, was fought on

the Atlantic, mostly between French naval vessels and American merchant ships. During this crisis,

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however, anxiety about foreign agents ran high, and members of Congress took action to prevent

internal subversion. The most controversial of these steps were the Alien and Sedition Acts. These

two laws, passed in 1798, were intended to prevent French agents and sympathizers from compro-

mising America’s resistance, but they also attacked Americans who criticized the president and the

Federalist Party.

The Alien Act allowed the federal government to deport foreign nationals, or “aliens,” who seemed

to pose a national security threat. Even more dramatically, the Sedition Act allowed the government

to prosecute anyone found to be speaking or publishing “false, scandalous, and malicious writing”

against the government.

These laws were not simply brought on by war hysteria. They re�ected common assumptions about

the nature of the American Revolution and the limits of liberty. In fact, most of the advocates for

the Constitution and the First Amendment accepted that free speech simply meant a lack of prior

censorship or restraint, not a guarantee against punishment. According to this logic, “licentious” or

unruly speech made society less free, not more. James Wilson, one of the principal architects of the

Constitution, argued that “every author is responsible when he attacks the security or welfare of the

government.”

In 1798, most Federalists were inclined to agree. Under the terms of the Sedition Act, they indicted

and prosecuted several Republican printers—and even a Republican congressman who had criti-

cized President Adams. Meanwhile, although the Adams administration never enforced the Alien

Act, its passage was enough to convince some foreign nationals to leave the country. For the presi-

dent and most other Federalists, the Alien and Sedition Acts represented a continuation of a conser-

vative rather than radical American Revolution.

However, the Alien and Sedition Acts caused a backlash in two ways. First, shocked opponents artic-

ulated a new and expansive vision for liberty. The New York lawyer Tunis Wortman, for example,

demanded an “absolute independence” of the press. Likewise, the Virginia judge George Hay

called for “any publication whatever criminal” to be exempt from legal punishment. Many Ameri-

cans began to argue that free speech meant the ability to say virtually anything without fear of

prosecution.

Second, James Madison and Thomas Je�erson helped organize opposition from state governments.

Ironically, both of them had expressed support for the principle behind the Sedition Act in previous

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years. Je�erson, for example, had written to Madison in 1789 that the nation should punish citizens

for speaking “false facts” that injured the country. Nevertheless, both men now opposed the Alien

and Sedition Acts on constitutional grounds. In 1798, Je�erson made this point in a resolution

adopted by the Kentucky state legislature. A short time later, the Virginia legislature adopted a simi-

lar document written by Madison.

The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions argued that the national government’s authority was lim-

ited to the powers expressly granted by the U.S. Constitution. More importantly, they asserted that

the states could declare federal laws unconstitutional. For the time being, these resolutions were sim-

ply gestures of de�ance. Their bold claim, however, would have important e�ects in later decades.

In just a few years, many Americans’ feelings toward France had changed dramatically. Far from re-

joicing in the “light of freedom,” many Americans now feared the “contagion” of French-style lib-

erty. Debates over the French Revolution in the 1790s gave Americans some of their earliest oppor-

tunities to articulate what it meant to be American. Did American national character rest on a radi-

cal and universal vision of human liberty? Or was America supposed to be essentially pious and tra-

ditional, an outgrowth of Great Britain? They couldn’t agree. It was on this cracked foundation that

many con�icts of the nineteenth century would rest.

IX. Religious Freedom

One reason the debates over the French Revolution became so heated was that Americans were un-

sure about their own religious future. The Illuminati scare of 1798 was just one manifestation of this

fear. Across the United States, a slow but profound shift in attitudes toward religion and govern-

ment began.

In 1776, none of the American state governments observed the separation of church and state. On

the contrary, all thirteen states either had established, o�cial, and tax-supported state churches, or at

least required their o�ceholders to profess a certain faith. Most o�cials believed this was necessary

to protect morality and social order. Over the next six decades, however, that changed. In 1833, the

�nal state, Massachusetts, stopped supporting an o�cial religious denomination. Historians call that

gradual process disestablishment.

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In many states, the process of disestablishment had started before the creation of the Constitution.

South Carolina, for example, had been nominally Anglican before the Revolution, but it had

dropped denominational restrictions in its 1778 constitution. Instead, it now allowed any church

consisting of at least �fteen adult males to become “incorporated,” or recognized for tax purposes as

a state-supported church. Churches needed only to agree to a set of basic Christian theological

tenets, which were vague enough that most denominations could support them.

South Carolina tried to balance religious freedom with the religious practice that was supposed to be

necessary for social order. O�ceholders were still expected to be Christians; their oaths were wit-

nessed by God, they were compelled by their religious beliefs to tell the truth, and they were called to

live according to the Bible. This list of minimal requirements came to de�ne acceptable Christianity

in many states. As new Christian denominations proliferated between 1780 and 1840, however,

more and more Christians fell outside this de�nition.

South Carolina continued its general establishment law until 1790, when a constitutional revision

removed the establishment clause and religious restrictions on o�ceholders. Many other states,

though, continued to support an established church well into the nineteenth century. The federal

Constitution did not prevent this. The religious freedom clause in the Bill of Rights, during these

decades, limited the federal government but not state governments. It was not until 1833 that a state

supreme court decision ended Massachusetts’s support for the Congregational Church.

Many political leaders, including Thomas Je�erson and James Madison, favored disestablishment

because they saw the relationship between church and state as a tool of oppression. Je�erson pro-

posed a Statute for Religious Freedom in the Virginia state assembly in 1779, but his bill failed in the

overwhelmingly Anglican legislature. Madison proposed it again in 1785, and it defeated a rival bill

that would have given equal revenue to all Protestant churches. Instead Virginia would not use pub-

lic money to support religion. “The Religion then of every man,” Je�erson wrote, “must be left to

the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these

may dictate.”

At the federal level, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 easily agreed that the na-

tional government should not have an o�cial religion. This principle was upheld in 1791 when the

First Amendment was rati�ed, with its guarantee of religious liberty. The limits of federal disestab-

lishment, however, required discussion. The federal government, for example, supported Native

American missionaries and congressional chaplains. Well into the nineteenth century, debate raged

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over whether the postal service should operate on Sundays, and whether non-Christians could act as

witnesses in federal courts. Americans continued to struggle to understand what it meant for Con-

gress not to “establish” a religion.

X. The Election of 1800

The year 1800 brought about a host of changes in government, in particular the �rst successful and peaceful transfer of power from one political party to another. But the year was important for another reason: the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (pic- tured here in 1800) was �nally opened to be occupied by Congress, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, and the courts of the District of Columbia. William Russell Birch, A view of the Capitol of Washington before it was burnt down by the British, c. 1800. Wikimedia.

Meanwhile, the Sedition and Alien Acts expired in 1800 and 1801. They had been relatively ine�ec-

tive at suppressing dissent. On the contrary, they were much more important for the loud reactions

they had inspired. They had helped many Americans decide what they didn’t want from their na-

tional government.

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By 1800, therefore, President Adams had lost the con�dence of many Americans. They had let him

know it. In 1798, for instance, he had issued a national thanksgiving proclamation. Instead of enjoy-

ing a day of celebration and thankfulness, Adams and his family had been forced by rioters to �ee the

capital city of Philadelphia until the day was over. Conversely, his prickly independence had also put

him at odds with Alexander Hamilton, the leader of his own party, who o�ered him little support.

After four years in o�ce, Adams found himself widely reviled.

In the election of 1800, therefore, the Republicans defeated Adams in a bitter and complicated presi-

dential race. During the election, one Federalist newspaper article predicted that a Republican vic-

tory would �ll America with “murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest.” A Republican newspa-

per, on the other hand, �ung sexual slurs against President Adams, saying he had “neither the force

and �rmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Both sides predicted disaster

and possibly war if the other should win.

In the end, the contest came down to a tie between two Republicans, Thomas Je�erson of Virginia

and Aaron Burr of New York, who each had seventy-three electoral votes. (Adams had sixty-�ve.)

Burr was supposed to be a candidate for vice president, not president, but under the Constitution’s

original rules, a tie-breaking vote had to take place in the House of Representatives. It was controlled

by Federalists bitter at Je�erson. House members voted dozens of times without breaking the tie. On

the thirty-sixth ballot, Thomas Je�erson emerged victorious.

Republicans believed they had saved the United States from grave danger. An assembly of Republi-

cans in New York City called the election a “bloodless revolution.” They thought of their victory as a

revolution in part because the Constitution (and eighteenth-century political theory) made no pro-

vision for political parties. The Republicans thought they were �ghting to rescue the country from

an aristocratic takeover, not just taking part in a normal constitutional process.

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This image attacks Je�erson’s support of the French Revolution and religious freedom. The letter, “To Mazzei,” refers to a 1796 correspondence that criticized the Federalists and, by association, President Washington. Providential Detection, 1797. Courtesy American Antiquarian Society. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

In his �rst inaugural address, however, Thomas Je�erson o�ered an olive branch to the Federalists.

He pledged to follow the will of the American majority, whom he believed were Republicans, but to

respect the rights of the Federalist minority. His election set an important precedent. Adams ac-

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cepted his electoral defeat and left the White House peacefully. “The revolution of 1800,” Je�erson

wrote years later, did for American principles what the Revolution of 1776 had done for its struc-

ture. But this time, the revolution was accomplished not “by the sword” but “by the rational and

peaceable instrument of reform, the su�rage of the people.” Four years later, when the Twelfth

Amendment changed the rules for presidential elections to prevent future deadlocks, it was designed

to accommodate the way political parties worked.

Despite Adams’s and Je�erson’s attempts to tame party politics, though, the tension between federal

power and the liberties of states and individuals would exist long into the nineteenth century. And

while Je�erson’s administration attempted to decrease federal in�uence, Chief Justice John Mar-

shall, an Adams appointee, worked to increase the authority of the Supreme Court. These compet-

ing agendas clashed most famously in the 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, which Marshall used to

establish a major precedent.

The Marbury case seemed insigni�cant at �rst. The night before leaving o�ce in early 1801, Adams

had appointed several men to serve as justices of the peace in Washington, D.C. By making these

“midnight appointments,” Adams had sought to put Federalists into vacant positions at the last

minute. On taking o�ce, however, Je�erson and his secretary of state, James Madison, had refused

to deliver the federal commissions to the men Adams had appointed. Several of the appointees, in-

cluding William Marbury, sued the government, and the case was argued before the Supreme Court.

Marshall used Marbury’s case to make a clever ruling. On the issue of the commissions, the Supreme

Court ruled in favor of the Je�erson administration. But Chief Justice Marshall went further in his

decision, ruling that the Supreme Court reserved the right to decide whether an act of Congress vio-

lated the Constitution. In other words, the court assumed the power of judicial review. This was a

major (and lasting) blow to the Republican agenda, especially after 1810, when the Supreme Court

extended judicial review to state laws. Je�erson was particularly frustrated by the decision, arguing

that the power of judicial review “would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”

XI. Conclusion

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A grand debate over political power engulfed the young United States. The Constitution ensured

that there would be a strong federal government capable of taxing, waging war, and making law, but

it could never resolve the young nation’s many con�icting constituencies. The Whiskey Rebellion

proved that the nation could sti�e internal dissent but exposed a new threat to liberty. Hamilton’s

banking system provided the nation with credit but also constrained frontier farmers. The

Constitution’s guarantee of religious liberty con�icted with many popular prerogatives. Dissension

only deepened, and as the 1790s progressed, Americans became bitterly divided over political parties

and foreign war.

During the rati�cation debates, Alexander Hamilton had written of the wonders of the Constitu-

tion. “A nation, without a national government,” he wrote, would be “an awful spectacle.” But, he

added, “the establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of

a whole people, is a prodigy,” a miracle that should be witnessed “with trembling anxiety.” Anti-

Federalists had grave concerns about the Constitution, but even they could celebrate the idea of na-

tional unity. By 1795, even the staunchest critics would have grudgingly agreed with Hamilton’s

convictions about the Constitution. Yet these same individuals could also take the cautions in

Washington’s 1796 farewell address to heart. “There is an opinion,” Washington wrote, “that parties

in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive

the spirit of liberty.” This, he conceded, was probably true, but in a republic, he said, the danger was

not too little partisanship, but too much. “A �re not to be quenched,” Washington warned, “it de-

mands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a �ame, lest, instead of warming, it should

consume.”

For every parade, thanksgiving proclamation, or grand procession honoring the unity of the nation,

there was also some political controversy reminding American citizens of how fragile their union

was. And as party di�erences and regional quarrels tested the federal government, the new nation

increasingly explored the limits of its democracy.

XII. Primary Sources

1. Hector St. Jean de Crèvecœur describes the American people, 1782

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Hector St. John de Crèvecœur was born in France, but relocated to the colony of New York and

married a local woman named Mehitable Tippet. For a period of several years, de Crèvecœur

wrote about the people he encountered in North America. The resulting work was widely suc-

cessful in Europe. In this passage, Crèvecœur attempts to re�ect on the di�erence between life

in Europe and life in North America.

2. A Confederation of Native peoples seek peace with the United States, 1786

In 1786, half a year before the Constitutional Convention, a collection of Native American

leaders gathered on the banks of the Detroit River to o�er a uni�ed message to the Congress of

the United States. Despite this proposal, American surveyors, settlers, and others continued to

cross the Ohio River.

3. Mary Smith Cranch comments on politics, 1786-87

In the aftermath of the Revolution, politics became a sport consumed by both men and women.

In a series of letters sent to her sister, Mary Smith Cranch comments on a series of political

events including the lack of support for diplomats, the circulation of paper or hard currency,

legal reform, tari�s against imported tea tables, Shays rebellion, and the role of women in sup-

porting the nation’s interests.

4. James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, 1785

Before the American Revolution, Virginia supported local Anglican churches through taxes. Af-

ter the American Revolution, Virginia had to decide what to do with this policy. Some founding

fathers, including Patrick Henry, wanted to equally distribute tax dollars to all churches. In this

document, James Madison explains why he did not want any government money to support re-

ligious causes in Virginia.

5. George Washington, “Farewell Address,” 1796

George Washington used his �nal public address as president to warn against what he under-

stood as the two greatest dangers to American prosperity: political parties and foreign wars.

Washington urged the American people to avoid political partisanship and entanglements with

European wars.

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6. Venture Smith, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture Smith, 1798

Venture Smith’s autobiography is one of the earliest slave narratives to circulate in the Atlantic

World. Slave narratives grew into the most important genre of antislavery literature and bore tes-

timony to the injustices of the slave system. Smith was unusually lucky in that he was able to

purchase his freedom, but his story nonetheless reveals the hardships faced by even the most for-

tunate enslaved men and women.

7. Susannah Rowson, Charlotte Temple, 1794

In Charlotte Temple, the �rst novel written in America, Susannah Rowson o�ered a cautionary

tale of a woman deceived and then abandoned by a roguish man. Americans throughout the

new nation read the book with rapt attention and many even traveled to New York City to visit

the supposed grave of this �ctional character.

8. Constitutional rati�cation cartoon, 1789

The Massachusetts Centinel ran a series of cartoons depicting the rati�cation of the Constitu-

tion. Each vertical pillar represents a state that has rati�ed the new government. In this cartoon,

North Carolina’s pillar is being guided into place (it would vote for rati�cation in November

1789). Rhode Island’s pillar, however, is crumbling and shows the uncertainty of the vote

there.

9. Anti-Thomas Je�erson Cartoon, 1797

This image attacks Je�erson’s support of the French Revolution and religious freedom. The Al-

tar to “Gallic Despotism” mocks Je�erson’s allegiance to the French. The letter, “To Mazzei,”

refers to a 1796 correspondence that criticized the Federalists and, by association, President

Washington.

XIII. Reference Material

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/a-new-nation/venture-smith-a-narrative-of-the-life-and-adventures-of-venture-1798/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/a-new-nation/susannah-rowson-charlotte-temple-1794/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/states-ratify-the-constitution/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/anti-thomas-jefferson-cartoon/

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This chapter was edited by Tara Strauch, with content contributions by Marco Basile, Nathaniel C.

Green, Brenden Kennedy, Spencer McBride, Andrea Nero, Cara Rogers, Tara Strauch, Michael

Harrison Taylor, Jordan Taylor, Kevin Wisniewski, and Ben Wright.

Recommended citation: Marco Basile et al., “A New Nation,” Tara Strauch, ed., in The American

Yawp, eds. Joseph Locke and Ben Wright (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018).