Untest Assignment HIST 1301

darthoten

7.TheEarlyRepublic_THEAMERICANYAWP.pdf

Home >History homework help >American history homework help >Untest Assignment HIST 1301

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 1/32

I. Introduction | II. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery | III. Je�ersonian

Republicanism | IV. Je�erson as President | V. Native American Power and the United States | VI. The

War of 1812 | VII. Conclusion | VIII. Primary Sources | IX. Reference Material

THE AMERICAN YAWP

7. The Early Republic

“America guided by wisdom An allegorical representation of the United States depicting their independence and prosperity,” 1815. Library of Congress.

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

http://www.americanyawp.com/index.html

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/America-Guided-by-Wisdom-30.jpg

https://www.loc.gov/item/2010634241

http://www.americanyawp.com/feedback_2018-2021/07-the-early-republic/

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 2/32

I. Introduction

Thomas Je�erson’s electoral victory over John Adams—and the larger victory of the Republicans

over the Federalists—was but one of many changes in the early republic. Some, like Je�erson’s vic-

tory, were accomplished peacefully, and others violently. The wealthy and the powerful, middling

and poor whites, Native Americans, free and enslaved African Americans, in�uential and poor

women: all demanded a voice in the new nation that Thomas Paine called an “asylum” for liberty.

All would, in their own way, lay claim to the freedom and equality promised, if not fully realized, by

the Revolution.

II. Free and Enslaved Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery

Led by the enslaved man Gabriel, close to one thousand enslaved men planned to end slavery in Vir-

ginia by attacking Richmond in late August 1800. Some of the conspirators would set diversionary

�res in the city’s warehouse district. Others would attack Richmond’s white residents, seize weap-

ons, and capture Virginia governor James Monroe. On August 30, two enslaved men revealed the

plot to their enslaver, who noti�ed authorities. Faced with bad weather, Gabriel and other leaders

postponed the attack until the next night, giving Governor Monroe and the militia time to capture

the conspirators. After brie�y escaping, Gabriel was seized, tried, and hanged along with twenty-�ve

others. Their executions sent the message that others would be punished if they challenged slavery.

Subsequently, the Virginia government increased restrictions on free people of color.

Gabriel’s Rebellion, as the plot came to be known, taught Virginia’s white residents several lessons.

First, it suggested that enslaved Black Virginians were capable of preparing and carrying out a sophis-

ticated and violent revolution—undermining white supremacist assumptions about the inherent

intellectual inferiority of Black people. Furthermore, it demonstrated that white e�orts to suppress

news of other slave revolts—especially the 1791 slave rebellion in Haiti—had failed. Not only did

some literate enslaved people read accounts of the successful attack in Virginia’s newspapers, but

others also heard about the rebellion �rsthand when slaveholding refugees from Haiti arrived in Vir-

ginia with their enslaved laborers after July 1793.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 3/32

The Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) inspired free and enslaved Black Americans, and terri�ed

white Americans. Port cities in the United States were �ooded with news and refugees. Free people

of color embraced the revolution, understanding it as a call for full abolition and the rights of citi-

zenship denied in the United States. Over the next several decades, Black Americans continually

looked to Haiti as an inspiration in their struggle for freedom. For example, in 1829 David Walker, a

Black abolitionist in Boston, wrote an Appeal that called for resistance to slavery and racism. Walker

called Haiti the “glory of the blacks and terror of the tyrants” and said that Haitians, “according to

their word, are bound to protect and comfort us.” Haiti also proved that, given equal opportunities,

people of color could achieve as much as white people. In 1826 the third college graduate of color

in the United States, John Russwurm, gave a commencement address at Bowdoin College, noting

that, “Haytiens have adopted the republican form of government . . . [and] in no country are the

rights and privileges of citizens and foreigners more respected, and crimes less frequent.” In 1838

the Colored American, an early Black newspaper, professed that “no one who reads, with an unprej-

udiced mind, the history of Hayti . . . can doubt the capacity of colored men, nor the propriety of

removing all their disabilities.” Haiti, and the activism it inspired, sent the message that enslaved

and free Black people could not be omitted from conversations about the meaning of liberty and

equality. Their words and actions—on plantations, streets, and the printed page—left an indelible

mark on early national political culture.

The Black activism inspired by Haiti’s revolution was so powerful that anxious white leaders scram-

bled to use the violence of the Haitian revolt to reinforce white supremacy and pro-slavery views by

limiting the social and political lives of people of color. White publications mocked Black Americans

as bu�oons, ridiculing calls for abolition and equal rights. The most (in)famous of these, the

“Bobalition” broadsides, published in Boston in the 1810s, crudely caricatured African Americans.

Widely distributed materials like these became the basis for racist ideas that thrived in the nineteenth

century. But such ridicule also implied that Black Americans’ presence in the political conversation

was signi�cant enough to require it. The need to reinforce such an obvious di�erence between

whiteness and blackness implied that the di�erences might not be so obvious after all.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 4/32

The idea and image of Black Haitian revolutionaries sent shock waves throughout white America. That Black people, enslaved and free, might turn violent against white people, so obvious in this image where a Black soldier holds up the head of a white sol- dier, remained a serious fear in the hearts and minds of white Southerners throughout the antebellum period. January Suchodol- ski, Battle at San Domingo, 1845. Wikimedia.

Henry Moss, an enslaved man in Virginia, became arguably the most famous Black man of the day

when white spots appeared on his body in 1792, turning him visibly white within three years. As his

skin changed, Moss marketed himself as “a great curiosity” in Philadelphia and soon earned enough

money to buy his freedom. He met the great scientists of the era—including Samuel Stanhope

Smith and Dr. Benjamin Rush—who joyously deemed Moss to be living proof of their theory that

“the Black Color (as it is called) of the Negroes is derived from the leprosy.” Something, somehow,

was “curing” Moss of his blackness. In the whitening body of slave-turned-patriot-turned-curiosity,

many Americans fostered ideas of race that would cause major problems in the years ahead.

The �rst decades of the new American republic coincided with a radical shift in understandings of

race. Politically and culturally, Enlightenment thinking fostered beliefs in common humanity, the

possibility of societal progress, the remaking of oneself, and the importance of one’s social and eco-

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Haitian-Revolution.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_for_Palm_Tree_Hill.jpg

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 5/32

logical environment—a four-pronged revolt against the hierarchies of the Old World. Yet a tension

arose due to Enlightenment thinkers’ desire to classify and order the natural world. Carolus Lin-

naeus, Comte de Bu�on, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, and others created connections between

race and place as they divided the racial “types” of the world according to skin color, cranial measure-

ments, and hair. They claimed that years under the hot sun and tropical climate of Africa darkened

the skin and recon�gured the skulls of the African race, whereas the cold northern latitudes of Eu-

rope molded and sustained the “Caucasian” race. The environments endowed both races with re-

spective characteristics, which accounted for di�erences in humankind tracing back to a common

ancestry. A universal human nature, therefore, housed not fundamental di�erences but rather the

“civilized” and the “primitive”—two poles on a scale of social progress.

Informed by European anthropology and republican optimism, Americans confronted their own

uniquely problematic racial landscape. In 1787, Samuel Stanhope Smith published his treatise Essay

on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species, which further articu-

lated the theory of racial change and suggested that improving the social environment would tap

into the innate equality of humankind and dramatically uplift nonwhite races. The proper society,

he and others believed, could gradually “whiten” men the way nature spontaneously chose to whiten

Henry Moss. Thomas Je�erson disagreed. While Je�erson thought Native Americans could improve

and become “civilized,” he declared in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) that Black people

were incapable of mental improvement and that they might even have a separate ancestry—a theory

known as polygenesis, or multiple creations. His belief in polygenesis was less to justify slavery—en-

slavers universally rejected the theory as antibiblical and thus a threat to their primary instrument of

justi�cation, the Bible—and more to justify schemes for a white America, such as the plan to gradu-

ally send freed Black people to Africa. Many Americans believed nature had made the white and

Black races too di�erent to peacefully coexist, and they viewed African colonization as the solution

to America’s racial problem.

Je�erson’s Notes on the State of Virginia sparked considerable backlash from antislavery and Black

communities. The celebrated Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker, for example, immediately wrote to

Je�erson and demanded he “eradicate that train of absurd and false ideas” and instead embrace the

belief that we are “all of one �esh” and with “all the same sensations and endowed . . . with the same

faculties.” Many years later, in his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), David

Walker channeled decades of Black protest, simultaneously denouncing the moral rot of slavery and

racism while praising the inner strength of the race.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 6/32

Je�erson had his defenders. White men such as Charles Caldwell and Samuel George Morton hard-

ened Je�erson’s skepticism, o�ering a “biological” case for Black and white people not only having

separate creations but actually being di�erent species, a position increasingly articulated throughout

the antebellum period. Few Americans subscribed wholesale to such theories, but many shared be-

liefs in white supremacy. As the decades passed, White Americans were forced to acknowledge that if

the Black population was indeed whitening, it resulted from interracial sex and not the environ-

ment. The sense of inspiration and wonder that followed Henry Moss in the 1790s would have been

impossible just a generation later.

III. Je�ersonian Republicanism

Free and enslaved Black Americans were not alone in pushing against political hierarchies. Je�erson’s

election to the presidency in 1800 represented a victory for non-elite white Americans in their bid to

assume more direct control over the government. Elites had made no secret of their hostility toward

the direct control of government by the people. In both private correspondence and published

works, many of the nation’s founders argued that pure democracy would lead to anarchy. Massachu-

setts Federalist Fisher Ames spoke for many of his colleagues when he lamented the dangers that

democracy posed because it depended on public opinion, which “shifts with every current of

caprice.” Je�erson’s election, for Federalists like Ames, heralded a slide “down into the mire of a

democracy.”

Indeed, many political leaders and non-elite citizens believed Je�erson embraced the politics of the

masses. “In a government like ours it is the duty of the Chief-magistrate . . . to unite in himself the

con�dence of the whole people,” Je�erson wrote in 1810. Nine years later, looking back on his

monumental election, Je�erson again linked his triumph to the political engagement of ordinary cit-

izens: “The revolution of 1800 . . . was as real a revolution in the principles of our government as

that of 76 was in it’s form,” he wrote, “not e�ected indeed by the sword . . . but by the rational and

peaceable instrument of reform, the su�rage [voting] of the people.” Je�erson desired to convince

Americans, and the world, that a government that answered directly to the people would lead to last-

ing national union, not anarchic division. He wanted to prove that free people could govern them-

selves democratically.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 7/32

Je�erson set out to di�erentiate his administration from the Federalists. He de�ned American union

by the voluntary bonds of fellow citizens toward one another and toward the government. In con-

trast, the Federalists supposedly imagined a union de�ned by expansive state power and public sub-

mission to the rule of aristocratic elites. For Je�erson, the American nation drew its “energy” and its

strength from the “con�dence” of a “reasonable” and “rational” people.

Republican celebrations often credited Je�erson with saving the nation’s republican principles. In a

move that enraged Federalists, they used the image of George Washington, who had passed away in

1799, linking the republican virtue Washington epitomized to the democratic liberty Je�erson

championed. Leaving behind the military pomp of power-obsessed Federalists, Republicans had

peacefully elected the scribe of national independence, the philosopher-patriot who had battled

tyranny with his pen, not with a sword or a gun.

The celebrations of Je�erson’s presidency and the defeat of the Federalists expressed many citizens’

willingness to assert greater direct control over the government as citizens. The de�nition of citizen-

ship was changing. Early American national identity was coded masculine, just as it was coded white

and wealthy; yet, since the Revolution, women had repeatedly called for a place in the conversation.

Mercy Otis Warren was one of the most noteworthy female contributors to the public rati�cation

debate over the Constitution of 1787 and 1788, but women all over the country were urged to par-

ticipate in the discussion over the Constitution. “It is the duty of the American ladies, in a particular

manner, to interest themselves in the success of the measures that are now pursuing by the Federal

Convention for the happiness of America,” a Philadelphia essayist announced. “They can retain

their rank as rational beings only in a free government. In a monarchy . . . they will be considered as

valuable members of a society, only in proportion as they are capable of being mothers for soldiers,

who are the pillars of crowned heads.” American women were more than mothers to soldiers; they

were mothers to liberty.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 8/32

The artist James Pealse painted this portrait of his wife Mary and �ve of their eventual six children. Peale and others represented women as responsibl for the health of the republic through their roles as wives as mothers. Historians call this view of of women Republican Motherhood. Wikimedia.

Historians have used the term Republican Motherhood to describe the early American belief that

women were essential in nurturing the principles of liberty in the citizenry. Women would pass

along important values of independence and virtue to their children, ensuring that each generation

cherished the same values of the American Revolution. Because of these ideas, women’s actions be-

came politicized. Republican partisans even described women’s choice of sexual partner as crucial to

the health and well-being of both the party and the nation. “The fair Daughters of America” should

“never disgrace themselves by giving their hands in marriage to any but real republicans,” a group of

New Jersey Republicans asserted. A Philadelphia paper toasted “The fair Daughters of Columbia.

May their smiles be the reward of Republicans only.” Though unmistakably steeped in the gen-

dered assumptions about female sexuality and domesticity that denied women an equal share of the

political rights men enjoyed, these statements also conceded the pivotal role women played as active

participants in partisan politics.

IV. Je�erson as President

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/The_artist_and_his_family_james_peale.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_artist_and_his_family_james_peale.jpg

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 9/32

Thomas Je�erson’s victory over John Adams in the election of 1800 was celebrated through everyday Americans’ material cul- ture, including this victory banner. Smithsonian Institute, National Museum of American History.

Buttressed by robust public support, Je�erson sought to implement policies that re�ected his own

political ideology. He worked to reduce taxes and cut the government’s budget, believing that this

would expand the economic opportunities of free Americans. His cuts included national defense,

and Je�erson restricted the regular army to three thousand men. England may have needed taxes and

debt to support its military empire, but Je�erson was determined to live in peace—and that belief

led him to reduce America’s national debt while getting rid of all internal taxes during his �rst term.

In a move that became the crowning achievement of his presidency, Je�erson authorized the acquisi-

tion of Louisiana from France in 1803 in what is considered the largest real estate deal in American

history. France had ceded Louisiana to Spain in exchange for West Florida after the Seven Years’ War

decades earlier. Je�erson was concerned about American access to New Orleans, which served as an

important port for western farmers. His worries multiplied when the French secretly reacquired

Louisiana in 1800. Spain remained in Louisiana for two more years while the U.S. minister to

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Jefferson-Banner.jpg

http://www.history.org/history/teaching/enewsletter/volume7/oct08/primsource.cfm

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 10/32

France, Robert R. Livingston, tried to strike a compromise. Fortunately for the United States, the

pressures of war in Europe and the slave insurrection in Haiti forced Napoleon to rethink his vast

North American holdings. Rebellious enslaved people coupled with a yellow fever outbreak in Haiti

defeated French forces, stripping Napoleon of his ability to control Haiti (the home of pro�table

sugar plantations). Deciding to cut his losses, Napoleon o�ered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory

for $15 million—roughly equivalent to $250 million today. Negotiations between Livingston and

Napoleon’s foreign minister, Talleyrand, succeeded more spectacularly than either Je�erson or Liv-

ingston could have imagined.

Je�erson made an inquiry to his cabinet regarding the constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase,

but he believed he was obliged to operate outside the strict limitations of the Constitution if the

good of the nation was at stake, as his ultimate responsibility was to the American people. Je�erson

felt he should be able to “throw himself on the justice of his country” when he facilitated the inter-

ests of the very people he served.

Je�erson’s foreign policy, particularly the Embargo Act of 1807, elicited the most outrage from his

Federalist critics. As Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies moved across Europe, Je�erson wrote to a Euro-

pean friend that he was glad that God had “divided the dry lands of your hemisphere from the dry

lands of ours, and said ‘here, at least, be there peace.’” Unfortunately, the Atlantic Ocean soon be-

came the site of Je�erson’s greatest foreign policy test, as England, France, and Spain refused to re-

spect American ships’ neutrality. The greatest o�enses came from the British, who resumed the pol-

icy of impressment, seizing thousands of American sailors and forcing them to �ght for the British

navy.

Many Americans called for war when the British attacked the USS Chesapeake in 1807. The presi-

dent, however, decided on a policy of “peaceable coercion” and Congress agreed. Under the Em-

bargo Act of 1807, American ports were closed to all foreign trade in hopes of avoiding war. Je�er-

son hoped that an embargo would force European nations to respect American neutrality. Histori-

ans disagree over the wisdom of peaceable coercion. At �rst, withholding commerce rather than

declaring war appeared to be the ultimate means of nonviolent con�ict resolution. In practice, the

embargo hurt the U.S. economy. Even Je�erson’s personal �nances su�ered. When Americans re-

sorted to smuggling their goods out of the country, Je�erson expanded governmental powers to try

to enforce their compliance, leading some to label him a “tyrant.”

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 11/32

The attack of the Chesapeake caused such furor in the hearts of Americans that even eighty years after the incident, an artist sketched this drawing of the event. Fred S. Cozzens, The incident between HMS “Leopard” and USS “Chesapeake” that sparked the Chesapeake-Leopard A�air, 1897. Wikimedia.

Criticism of Je�erson’s policies re�ected the same rhetoric his supporters had used earlier against

Adams and the Federalists. Federalists attacked the American Philosophical Society and the study of

natural history, believing both to be too saturated with Democratic Republicans. Some Federalists

lamented the alleged decline of educational standards for children. Moreover, James Callender pub-

lished accusations (that were later proven credible by DNA evidence) that Je�erson was involved in a

sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, one of his enslaved laborers. Callender referred to Je�erson

as “our little mulatto president,” suggesting that sex with an enslaved person had somehow compro-

mised Je�erson’s racial integrity. Callender’s accusation joined previous Federalist attacks on

Je�erson’s racial politics, including a scathing pamphlet written by South Carolinian William

Loughton Smith in 1796 that described the principles of Je�ersonian democracy as the beginning of

a slippery slope to dangerous racial equality.

Arguments lamenting the democratization of America were far less e�ective than those that bor-

rowed from democratic language and alleged that Je�erson’s actions undermined the sovereignty of

the people. When Federalists attacked Je�erson, they often accused him of acting against the inter-

ests of the very public he claimed to serve. This tactic represented a pivotal development. As the Fed-

eralists scrambled to stay politically relevant, it became apparent that their ideology—rooted in eigh-

teenth-century notions of virtue, paternalistic rule by wealthy elite, and the deference of ordinary

citizens to an aristocracy of merit—was no longer tenable. The Federalists’ adoption of republican

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/USS-Chesapeake.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leopardchesapeake.jpg

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 12/32

political rhetoric signaled a new political landscape in which both parties embraced the direct in-

volvement of the citizenry. The Republican Party rose to power on the promise to expand voting

and promote a more direct link between political leaders and the electorate. The American populace

continued to demand more direct access to political power. Je�erson, James Madison, and James

Monroe sought to expand voting through policies that made it easier for Americans to purchase

land. Under their leadership, seven new states entered the Union. By 1824, only three states still had

rules about how much property someone had to own before he could vote. Never again would the

Federalists regain dominance over either Congress or the presidency; the last Federalist to run for

president, Rufus King, lost to Monroe in 1816.

V. Native American Power and the United States

The Je�ersonian rhetoric of equality contrasted harshly with the reality of a nation strati�ed along

the lines of gender, class, race, and ethnicity. Diplomatic relations between Native Americans and

local, state, and national governments o�er a dramatic example of the dangers of those inequalities.

Prior to the Revolution, many Native American nations had balanced a delicate diplomacy between

European empires, which scholars have called the Play-o� System. Moreover, in many parts of

North America, Indigenous peoples dominated social relations.

Americans pushed for more land in all their interactions with Native diplomats and leaders. But

boundaries were only one source of tension. Trade, criminal jurisdiction, roads, the sale of liquor,

and alliances were also key negotiating points. Despite their role in �ghting on both sides, Native

American negotiators were not included in the diplomatic negotiations that ended the Revolution-

ary War. Unsurprisingly, the �nal document omitted concessions for Native allies. Even as Native

peoples proved vital trading partners, scouts, and allies against hostile nations, they were often con-

demned by white settlers and government o�cials as “savages.” White ridicule of Indigenous prac-

tices and disregard for Indigenous nations’ property rights and sovereignty prompted some Indige-

nous peoples to turn away from white practices.

In the wake of the American Revolution, Native American diplomats developed relationships with

the United States, maintained or ceased relations with the British Empire (or with Spain in the

South), and negotiated their relationship with other Native nations. Formal diplomatic negotiations

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 13/32

included Native rituals to reestablish relationships and open communication. Treaty conferences

took place in Native towns, at neutral sites in borderlands, and in state and federal capitals. While

chiefs were politically important, skilled orators, such as Red Jacket, as well as intermediaries, and

interpreters also played key roles in negotiations. Native American orators were known for meta-

phorical language, command of an audience, and compelling voice and gestures.

Shown in this portrait as a re�ned gentleman, Red Jacket proved to be one of the most e�ective middlemen between Native Americans and U.S. o�cials. The medal worn around his neck, ap- parently given to him by George Washington, re�ects his position as an intermediary. Campbell & Burns, Red Jacket. Seneca war chief, Philadelphia: C. Hullmandel, 1838. Library of Congress.

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Red-Jacket.jpg

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2003670111/

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 14/32

Throughout the early republic, diplomacy was preferred to war. Violence and warfare carried enor-

mous costs for all parties—in lives, money, trade disruptions, and reputation. Diplomacy allowed

parties to air their grievances, negotiate their relationships, and minimize violence. Violent con�icts

arose when diplomacy failed.

Native diplomacy testi�ed to the complexity of Indigenous cultures and their role in shaping the

politics and policy of American communities, states, and the federal government. Yet white atti-

tudes, words, and policies frequently relegated Native peoples to the literal and �gurative margins as

“ignorant savages.” Poor treatment like this inspired hostility and calls for alliances from leaders of

distinct Native nations, including the Shawnee leader Tecumseh.

Tecumseh and his brother, Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, helped envision an alliance of North

America’s Indigenous populations to halt the encroachments of the United States. They created

towns in present-day Indiana, �rst at Greenville, then at Prophetstown, in de�ance of the Treaty of

Greenville (1795). Tecumseh traveled to many diverse Native nations from Canada to Georgia, call-

ing for uni�cation, resistance, and the restoration of sacred power.

Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa’s confederacy was the culmination of many movements that swept

through Indigenous North America during the eighteenth century. An earlier coalition fought in

Pontiac’s War. Neolin, the Delaware prophet, in�uenced Pontiac, an Ottawa (Odawa) war chief,

with his vision of Native independence, cultural renewal, and religious revitalization. Through Ne-

olin, the Master of Life—the Great Spirit—urged Native peoples to shrug o� their dependency on

European goods and technologies, reassert their faith in Native spirituality and rituals, and cooperate

with one another against the “White people’s ways and nature.” Additionally, Neolin advocated

violence against British encroachments on Native American lands, which escalated after the Seven

Years’ War. His message was particularly e�ective in the Ohio and Upper Susquehanna Valleys,

where polyglot communities of Indigenous refugees and migrants from across eastern North Amer-

ica lived together. When combined with the militant leadership of Pontiac, who took up Neolin’s

message, the many Native peoples of the region united in attacks against British forts and people.

From 1763 until 1765, the Great Lakes, Ohio Valley, and Upper Susquehanna Valley areas were em-

broiled in a war between Pontiac’s confederacy and the British Empire, a war that ultimately forced

the English to restructure how they managed Native-British relations and trade.

In the interim between 1765 and 1811, other Native prophets kept Neolin’s message alive while en-

couraging Indigenous peoples to resist Euro-American encroachments. These individuals included

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 15/32

the Ottawa leader “the Trout,” also called Maya-Ga-Wy; Joseph Brant of the Iroquois (Hau-

denosaunee); the Creek headman Mad Dog; Painted Pole of the Shawnee; a Mohawk woman named

Coocoochee; Main Poc of the Potawatomi; and the Seneca prophet Handsome Lake. Once again,

the epicenter of this resistance and revitalization originated in the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes re-

gions, where from 1791 to 1795 a joint force of Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Iroquois, Ojibwe, Ot-

tawa, Huron, Potawatomi, Mingo, Chickamauga, and other Indigenous peoples waged war against

the American republic. Although this “Western Confederacy” ultimately su�ered defeat at the Battle

of Fallen Timbers in 1794, this Native coalition achieved a number of military victories against the

republic, including the destruction of two American armies, forcing President Washington to refor-

mulate federal policy. Tecumseh’s experiences as a warrior against the American military in this con-

�ict probably in�uenced his later e�orts to generate solidarity among North American Indigenous

communities.

Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa articulated ideas and beliefs similar to their eighteenth-century prede-

cessors. In particular, Tenskwatawa pronounced that the Master of Life entrusted him and Tecum-

seh with the responsibility for returning Native peoples to the one true path and to rid Native com-

munities of the dangerous and corrupting in�uences of Euro-American trade and culture. Ten-

skwatawa stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal, which coincided with his blending of

the tenets, traditions, and rituals of Indigenous religions and Christianity. In particular, Ten-

skwatawa emphasized apocalyptic visions that he and his followers would usher in a new world and

restore Native power to the continent. For Native peoples who gravitated to the Shawnee brothers,

this emphasis on cultural and religious revitalization was empowering and spiritually liberating, es-

pecially given the continuous American assaults on Native land and power in the early nineteenth

century.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 16/32

Tenskwatawa as painted by George Catlin, in 1831. Caitlin acknowledged the prophet’s spiritual power and painted him with a medicine stick. Wikimedia.

Tecumseh’s confederacy drew heavily from Indigenous communities in the Old Northwest and the

festering hatred for land-hungry Americans. Tecumseh attracted a wealth of allies in his adamant re-

fusal to concede any more land. Tecumseh proclaimed that the Master of Life tasked him with the

responsibility of returning Native lands to their rightful owners. In his e�orts to promote unity

among Native peoples, Tecumseh also o�ered these communities a distinctly Native American iden-

tity that brought disparate Native peoples together under the banner of a common spirituality, to-

gether resisting an oppressive force. In short, spirituality tied together the resistance movement.

Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa were not above using this unifying rhetoric to legitimate their own au-

thority within Indigenous communities at the expense of other Native leaders. This manifested most

visibly during Tenskwatawa’s witch hunts of the 1800s. Those who opposed Tenskwatawa or sought

to accommodate Americans were labeled witches.

While Tecumseh attracted Native peoples from around the Northwest and some from the South-

east, the Red Stick Creeks brought these ideas to the Southeast. Led by the Creek prophet Hillis

Hadjo, who accompanied Tecumseh when he toured throughout the Southeast in 1811, the Red

Sticks integrated certain religious tenets from the north and invented new religious practices speci�c

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Ten-sq%C3%BAat-a-way-2.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecumseh#/media/File:Ten-sq%C3%BAat-a-way.jpg

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 17/32

to the Creeks, all the while communicating and coordinating with Tecumseh after he left Creek

Country. In doing so, the Red Sticks joined Tecumseh in his resistance movement while seeking to

purge Creek society of its Euro-American dependencies. Creek leaders who maintained relationships

with the United States, in contrast, believed that accommodation and diplomacy might stave o�

American encroachments better than violence.

Additionally, the Red Sticks discovered that most southeastern Indigenous leaders cared little for

Tecumseh’s confederacy. This lack of allies hindered the spread of a movement in the southeast, and

the Red Sticks soon found themselves in a civil war against other Creeks. Tecumseh thus found little

support in the Southeast beyond the Red Sticks, who by 1813 were cut o� from the North by An-

drew Jackson. Shortly thereafter, Jackson’s forces were joined by Lower Creek and Cherokee forces

that helped defeat the Red Sticks, culminating in Jackson’s victory at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

Following their defeat, the Red Sticks were forced to cede an unprecedented fourteen million acres

of land in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. As historian Adam Rothman argues, the defeat of the Red

Sticks allowed the United States to expand west of the Mississippi, guaranteeing the continued exis-

tence and pro�tability of slavery.

Many Native leaders refused to join Tecumseh and instead maintained their loyalties to the Ameri-

can republic. After the failures of Native American unity and loss at the Battle of Tippecanoe in

1811, Tecumseh’s confederation �oundered. The War of 1812 between the United States and

Britain o�ered new opportunities for Tecumseh and his followers. With the United States dis-

tracted, Tecumseh and his confederated army seized several American forts on their own initiative.

Eventually Tecumseh solicited British aid after sustaining heavy losses from American �ghters at

Fort Wayne and Fort Harrison. Even then, the confederacy faced an uphill battle, particularly after

American naval forces secured control of the Great Lakes in September 1813, forcing British ships

and reinforcements to retreat. Yet Tecumseh and his Native allies fought on despite being sur-

rounded by American forces. Tecumseh told the British commander Henry Proctor, “Our lives are

in the hands of the Great Spirit. We are determined to defend our lands, and if it is his will, we wish

to leave our bones upon them.” Not soon thereafter, Tecumseh fell on the battle�elds of Mora-

viantown, Ontario, in October 1813. His death dealt a severe blow to Native American resistance

against the United States. Men like Tecumseh and Pontiac, however, left behind a legacy of Native

American unity that was not soon forgotten.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 18/32

VI. The War of 1812

Soon after Je�erson retired from the presidency in 1808, Congress ended the embargo and the

British relaxed their policies toward American ships. Despite the embargo’s unpopularity, Je�erson

still believed that more time would have proven that peaceable coercion worked. Yet war with Britain

loomed—a war that would galvanize the young American nation.

The War of 1812 stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues.

The �rst had to do with the nation’s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation dur-

ing the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in

1793. The second had older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary era. In both cases, American in-

terests con�icted with those of the British Empire. British leaders showed little interest in accommo-

dating the Americans.

Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most

important sources of con�ict between the two nations. Driven in part by trade with Europe, the

American economy grew quickly during the �rst decade of the nineteenth century, creating a labor

shortage in the American shipping industry. In response, pay rates for sailors increased and Ameri-

can captains recruited heavily from the ranks of British sailors. As a result, around 30 percent of

sailors employed on American merchant ships were British. As a republic, the Americans advanced

the notion that people could become citizens by renouncing their allegiance to their home nation.

To the British, a person born in the British Empire was a subject of that empire for life, a status they

could not change. The British Navy was embroiled in a di�cult war and was unwilling to lose any of

its labor force. In order to regain lost crewmen, the British often boarded American ships to reclaim

their sailors. Of course, many American sailors found themselves caught up in these sweeps and “im-

pressed” into the service of the British Navy. Between 1803 and 1812, some six thousand Americans

su�ered this fate. The British would release Americans who could prove their identity, but this

process could take years while the sailor endured harsh conditions and the dangers of the Royal

Navy.

In 1806, responding to a French declaration of a complete naval blockade of Great Britain, the

British demanded that neutral ships �rst carry their goods to Britain to pay a transit duty before they

could proceed to France. Despite loopholes in these policies between 1807 and 1812, Britain, France,

and their allies seized about nine hundred American ships, prompting a swift and angry American

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 19/32

response. Je�erson’s embargo sent the nation into a deep depression and drove exports down from

$108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, all while having little e�ect on Europeans. Within �f-

teen months Congress repealed the Embargo Act, replacing it with smaller restrictions on trade with

Britain and France. Although e�orts to stand against Great Britain had failed, resentment of British

trade policy remained widespread.

Far from the Atlantic Ocean on the American frontier, Americans were also at odds with the British

Empire. From their position in Canada, the British maintained relations with Native Americans in

the Old Northwest, supplying them with goods and weapons in attempts to maintain ties in case of

another war with the United States. The threat of a Native uprising increased after 1805 when Ten-

skwatawa and Tecumseh built their alliance. The territorial governor of Illinois, William Henry Har-

rison, eventually convinced the Madison administration to allow for military action against the Na-

tive Americans in the Ohio Valley. The resulting Battle of Tippecanoe drove the followers of the

Prophet from their gathering place but did little to change the dynamics of the region. British e�orts

to arm and supply Native Americans, however, angered Americans and strengthened anti-British

sentiments.

Republicans began to talk of war as a solution to these problems, arguing that it was necessary to

complete the War for Independence by preventing British e�orts to keep America subjugated at sea

and on land. The war would also represent another battle against the Loyalists, some thirty-eight

thousand of whom had populated Upper Canada after the Revolution and sought to establish a

counter to the radical experiment of the United States.

In 1812, the Republicans held 75 percent of the seats in the House and 82 percent of the Senate, giv-

ing them a free hand to set national policy. Among them were the “War Hawks,” whom one histo-

rian describes as “too young to remember the horrors of the American Revolution” and thus “will-

ing to risk another British war to vindicate the nation’s rights and independence.” This group in-

cluded men who would remain in�uential long after the War of 1812, such as Henry Clay of Ken-

tucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina.

Convinced by the War Hawks in his party, Madison drafted a statement of the nation’s disputes with

the British and asked Congress for a war declaration on June 1, 1812. The Republicans hoped that

an invasion of Canada might remove the British from their backyard and force the empire to change

their naval policies. After much negotiation in Congress over the details of the bill, Madison signed a

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 20/32

declaration of war on June 18, 1812. For the second time, the United States was at war with Great

Britain.

While the War of 1812 contained two key players—the United States and Great Britain—it also

drew in other groups, such as Tecumseh and his Confederacy. The war can be organized into three

stages or theaters. The �rst, the Atlantic Theater, lasted until the spring of 1813. During this time,

Great Britain was chie�y occupied in Europe against Napoleon, and the United States invaded

Canada and sent their �edgling navy against British ships. During the second stage, from early 1813

to 1814, the United States launched their second o�ensive against Canada and the Great Lakes. In

this period, the Americans won their �rst successes. The third stage, the Southern Theater, con-

cluded with Andrew Jackson’s January 1815 victory outside New Orleans, Louisiana.

During the war, the Americans were greatly interested in Canada and the Great Lakes borderlands.

In July 1812, the United States launched their �rst o�ensive against Canada. By August, however,

the British and their allies rebu�ed the Americans, costing the United States control over Detroit

and parts of the Michigan Territory. By the close of 1813, the Americans recaptured Detroit, shat-

tered the Confederacy, killed Tecumseh, and eliminated the British threat in that theater. Despite

these accomplishments, the American land forces proved outmatched by their adversaries.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 21/32

As pictured in this 1812 political cartoon published in Philadelphia, Americans lambasted the British and their native allies for what they considered “savage” o�enses during war, though Americans too were engaging in such heinous acts. William Charles, A scene on the frontiers as practiced by the “humane” British and their “worthy” allies, Philadelphia, 1812. Library of Congress.

After the land campaign of 1812 failed to secure America’s war aims, Americans turned to the infant

navy in 1813. Privateers and the U.S. Navy rallied behind the slogan “Free Trade and Sailors’

Rights!” Although the British possessed the most powerful navy in the world, surprisingly the young

American navy extracted early victories with larger, more heavily armed ships. By 1814, however, the

major naval battles had been fought with little e�ect on the war’s outcome.

With Britain’s main naval �eet �ghting in the Napoleonic Wars, smaller ships and armaments sta-

tioned in North America were generally no match for their American counterparts. Early on, Ameri-

cans humiliated the British in single ship battles. In retaliation, Captain Philip Broke of the HMS

Shannon attacked the USS Chesapeake, captained by James Lawrence, on June 1, 1813. Within six

minutes, the Chesapeake was destroyed and Lawrence mortally wounded. Yet the Americans did not

give up as Lawrence commanded them, “Tell the men to �re faster! Don’t give up the ship!”

Lawrence died of his wounds three days later, and although the Shannon defeated the Chesapeake,

Lawrence’s words became a rallying cry for the Americans.

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/British-Indians-Savage-War-of-1812.jpg

https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2002708987/

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 22/32

Two and a half months later the USS Constitution squared o� with the HMS Guerriere. As the

Guerriere tried to outmaneuver the Americans, the Constitution pulled along broadside and began

hammering the British frigate. The Guerriere returned �re, but as one sailor observed, the cannon-

balls simply bounced o� the Constitution’s thick hull. “Huzzah! Her sides are made of iron!”

shouted the sailor, and henceforth, the Constitution became known as “Old Ironsides.” In less than

thirty-�ve minutes, the Guerriere was so badly damaged that it was set a�ame rather than taken as a

prize.

In 1814, Americans gained naval victories on Lake Champlain near Plattsburgh, preventing a British

land invasion of the United States and on the Chesapeake Bay at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Fort

McHenry repelled the nineteen-ship British �eet, enduring twenty-seven hours of bombardment vir-

tually unscathed. Watching from aboard a British ship, American poet Francis Scott Key penned the

verses of what would become the national anthem, “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Impressive though these accomplishments were, they belied what was actually a poorly executed mil-

itary campaign against the British. The U.S. Navy won their most signi�cant victories in the Atlantic

Ocean in 1813. Napoleon’s defeat in early 1814, however, allowed the British to focus on North

America and blockade American ports. Thanks to the blockade, the British were able to burn Wash-

ington, D.C., on August 24, 1814 and open a new theater of operations in the South. The British

sailed for New Orleans, where they achieved a naval victory at Lake Borgne before losing the land

invasion to Major General Andrew Jackson’s troops in January 1815. This American victory actu-

ally came after the United States and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Ghent on December

24, 1814, but the Battle of New Orleans proved to be a psychological victory that boosted American

morale and a�ected how the war has been remembered.

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 23/32

The artist shows Washington D.C. engulfed in �ames as the British troops set �re to the city in 1813. “Capture of the City of Washington,” August 1814. Wikimedia.

But not all Americans supported the war. In 1814, New England Federalists met in Hartford, Con-

necticut, to try to end the war and curb the power of the Republican Party. They produced a docu-

ment that proposed abolishing the three-�fths rule that a�orded southern enslavers disproportionate

representation in Congress, limiting the president to a single term in o�ce, and most importantly,

demanding a two-thirds congressional majority, rather than a simple majority, for legislation that de-

clared war, admitted new states into the Union, or regulated commerce. With the two-thirds major-

ity, New England’s Federalist politicians believed they could limit the power of their political foes.

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Washington-Burning.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22Capture_of_the_City_of_Washington,%22_August_1814,_1814_-_NARA_-_531090.jpg

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 24/32

Contemplating the possibility of secession over the War of 1812 (fueled in large part by the economic interests of New England merchants), the Hartford Convention posed the possibility of disaster for the still-young United States. England, represented by the �gure John Bull on the right side, is shown in this political cartoon with arms open to accept New England back into its em- pire. William Charles Jr., The Hartford Convention or Leap No Leap. Wikimedia.

These proposals were sent to Washington, but unfortunately for the Federalists, the victory at New

Orleans buoyed popular support for the Madison administration. With little evidence, newspapers

accused the Hartford Convention’s delegates of plotting secession. The episode demonstrated the

waning power of Federalism and the need for the region’s politicians to shed their aristocratic and

Anglophile image. The next New England politician to assume the presidency, John Quincy Adams,

would, in 1824, emerge not from within the Federalist fold but having served as secretary of state un-

der President James Monroe, the leader of the Virginia Republicans.

The Treaty of Ghent essentially returned relations between the United States and Britain to their

prewar status. The war, however, mattered politically and strengthened American nationalism. Dur-

ing the war, Americans read patriotic newspaper stories, sang patriotic songs, and bought consumer

goods decorated with national emblems. They also heard stories about how the British and their Na-

tive allies threatened to bring violence into American homes. For examples, rumors spread that

British o�cers promised rewards of “beauty and booty” for their soldiers when they attacked New

http://www.americanyawp.com/text/wp-content/uploads/Hartford-Convention.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:TheHartfordConventionOrLeapNoLeap.jpg

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 25/32

Orleans. In the Great Lakes borderlands, wartime propaganda fueled Americans’ fear of Britain’s

Native American allies, whom they believed would slaughter men, women, and children indiscrimi-

nately. Terror and love worked together to make American citizens feel a stronger bond with their

country. Because the war mostly cut o� America’s trade with Europe, it also encouraged Americans

to see themselves as di�erent and separate; it fostered a sense that the country had been reborn.

Former treasury secretary Albert Gallatin claimed that the War of 1812 revived “national feelings”

that had dwindled after the Revolution. “The people,” he wrote, were now “more American; they

feel and act more like a nation.” Politicians proposed measures to reinforce the fragile Union

through capitalism and built on these sentiments of nationalism. The United States continued to

expand into Native American territories with westward settlement in far-�ung new states like Ten-

nessee, Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois. Between 1810 and 1830, the country added more than six

thousand new post o�ces.

In 1817, South Carolina congressman John C. Calhoun called for building projects to “bind the re-

public together with a perfect system of roads and canals.” He joined with other politicians, such

as Kentucky’s powerful Henry Clay, to promote what came to be called an American System. They

aimed to make America economically independent and encouraged commerce between the states

over trade with Europe and the West Indies. The American System would include a new Bank of the

United States to provide capital; a high protective tari�, which would raise the prices of imported

goods and help American-made products compete; and a network of “internal improvements,”

roads and canals to let people take American goods to market.

These projects were controversial. Many people believed that they were unconstitutional or would

increase the federal government’s power at the expense of the states. Even Calhoun later changed his

mind and joined the opposition. The War of 1812, however, had reinforced Americans’ sense of the

nation’s importance in their political and economic life. Even when the federal government did not

act, states created banks, roads, and canals of their own.

What may have been the boldest declaration of America’s postwar pride came in 1823. President

James Monroe issued an ultimatum to the empires of Europe in order to support several wars of in-

dependence in Latin America. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the United States considered its

entire hemisphere, both North and South America, o�-limits to new European colonization. Al-

though Monroe was a Je�ersonian, some of his principles echoed Federalist policies. Whereas Je�er-

son cut the size of the military and ended all internal taxes in his �rst term, Monroe advocated the

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 26/32

need for a strong military and an aggressive foreign policy. Since Americans were spreading out over

the continent, Monroe authorized the federal government to invest in canals and roads, which he

said would “shorten distances and, by making each part more accessible to and dependent on the

other . . . shall bind the Union more closely together.” As Federalists had attempted two decades

earlier, Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to

strengthen the nation.

VII. Conclusion

Monroe’s election after the conclusion of the War of 1812 signaled the death knell of the Federalists.

Some predicted an “era of good feelings” and an end to party divisions. The War had cultivated a

profound sense of union among a diverse and divided people. Yet that “era of good feelings” would

never really come. Political division continued. Though the dying Federalists would fade from politi-

cal relevance, a schism within the Republican Party would give rise to Jacksonian Democrats. Politi-

cal limits continued along class, gender, and racial and ethnic lines. At the same time, industrializa-

tion and the development of American capitalism required new justi�cations of inequality. Social

change and increased immigration prompted nativist reactions that would divide “true” Americans

from dangerous or undeserving “others.” Still, a cacophony of voices clamored to be heard and

struggled to realize a social order compatible with the ideals of equality and individual liberty. As al-

ways, the meaning of democracy was in �ux.

VIII. Primary Sources

1. Letter of Cato and petition by “the negroes who obtained freedom by the late act,” in Postscript

to the Freeman’s Journal, September 21, 1781

The elimination of slavery in northern states like Pennsylvania was slow and hard-fought. A bill

passed in 1780 began the slow process of eroding slavery in the state, but a proposal just one year

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/letter-of-cato-and-petition-by-the-negroes-who-obtained-freedom-by-the-late-act-in-postscript-to-the-freemans-journal-september-21-1781/

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 27/32

later would have erased that bill and furthered the distance between slavery and freedom. The

action of Black Philadelphians and others succeeded in defeating this measure. In this letter to

the Black newspaper, Philadelphia Freedom’s Journal, a formerly enslaved man uses the rhetoric

of the American Revolution to attack American slavery.

2. Thomas Je�erson’s racism, 1788

American racism spread during the �rst decades after the American Revolution. Racial preju-

dice existed for centuries, but the belief that African-descended peoples were inherently and per-

manently inferior to Anglo-descended peoples developed sometime around the late eighteenth

century. Writings such as this piece from Thomas Je�erson fostered faulty scienti�c reasoning to

justify laws that protected slavery and white supremacy.

3. Black scientist Benjamin Banneker demonstrates Black intelligence to Thomas Je�erson, 1791

Benjamin Banneker, a free Black American and largely self-taught astronomer and mathemati-

cian, wrote Thomas Je�erson, then Secretary of State, on August 19, 1791. Banneker included

this letter, as well as Je�erson’s short reply, in several of the �rst editions of his almanacs in part

because he hoped it would dispel the widespread assumption that Je�erson perpetuated in his

Notes on the State of Virginia that Black people were incapable of intellectual achievement.

4. Creek headman Alexander McGillivray (Hoboi-Hili-Miko) seeks to build an alliance with Spain,

1785

Native peoples had long employed strategies of playing Europeans o� against each other to

maintain their independence and neutrality. As early as 1785, the Creek headman Alexander

McGillivray (Hoboi-Hili-Miko) saw the threat the expansionist Americans placed on Native

peoples and the inability of a weak United States government to restrain their citizens from en-

croaching on Native lands. McGillivray sought the aid and protection of the Spanish in order to

maintain the supply of trade goods into Creek country and counter the Americans.

5. Tecumseh Calls for Native American resistance, 1810

Like Pontiac before him, Tecumseh articulated a spiritual message of Native American unity

and resistance. In this document, he acknowledges his Shawnee heritage, but appeals to a larger

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/thomas-jefferson-notes-on-the-state-of-virginia-1788/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/black-scientist-benjamin-banneker-demonstrates-black-intelligence-to-thomas-jefferson-1791/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/creek-headman-alexander-mcgillivray-hoboi-hili-miko-seeks-to-build-an-alliance-with-spain-1785/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/tecumseh-letter-to-william-henry-harrison-1810/

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 28/32

community of “red men,” who he describes as “once a happy race, since made miserable by the

white people.” This document reveals not only Tecumseh’s message of resistance, but it also

shows that Anglo-American understandings of race had spread to Native Americans as well.

6. Congress debates going to war, 1811

Americans were not united in their support for the War of 1812. In these two documents we

hear from members of congress as they debate whether or not America should go to war against

Great Britain.

7. Abigail Bailey escapes an abusive relationship, 1815

Women in early America su�ered from a lack of rights or means of defending themselves against

domestic abuse. The case of Abigail Bailey is remarkable because she was able to successfully free

herself and her children from an abusive husband and father.

8. Genius of the Ladies magazine illustration, 1792

Despite the restrictions imposed on their American citizenship, white women worked to expand

their rights to education in the new nation using literature and the arts. The �rst journal for

women in the United States, The Lady’s Magazine, and repository of entertaining

knowledge, introduced their initial volume with an engraving celebrating the transatlantic ex-

change between women’s rights advocates. In the engraving, English writer Mary Wollstonecraft

presents her work, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” to Liberty who has the tools of the

arts at her feet.

9. America Guided by Wisdom engraving, 1815

This engraving re�ects the sense of triumph many white Americans felt following the War of

1812. Drawing from the visual language of Je�ersonian Republicans, we see America—repre-

sented as a woman in classical dress—surrounded by gods of wisdom, commerce, and agricul-

ture on one side and a statue of George Washington emblazoned with the recent war’s victories

on the other. The romantic sense of the United States as the heir to the ancient Roman repub-

lic, pride in military victory, and the glori�cation of domestic production contributed to the

idea the young nation was about to enter an “era of good feelings.”

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/debate-over-the-war-of-1812-1811/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/the-early-republic/abigail-bailey-escapes-an-abusive-relationship-1815/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/genius-of-the-ladies/

http://www.americanyawp.com/reader/america-guided-by-wisdom/

4/11/2021 7. The Early Republic | THE AMERICAN YAWP

www.americanyawp.com/text/07-the-early-republic/ 29/32

IX. Reference Material

This chapter was edited by Nathaniel C. Green, with content contributions by Justin Clark, Adam

Costanzo, Stephanie Gamble, Dale Kretz, Julie Richter, Bryan Rind�eisch, Angela Riotto, James

Risk, Cara Rogers, Jonathan Wilfred Wilson, and Charlton Yingling.

Recommended citation: Justin Clark et al., “The Early Republic,” Nathaniel C. Green, ed., in The

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