The New Republic

The United States of America 1789-1815

Reginald Horsman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317886846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Reginald Horsman's powerful and comprehensive survey of the early years of the American Republic covers the dramatic years from the setting up of the US Constitution in 1789, the first US presidency under George Washington, and also the presidencies of Adams, Jeffersen and Madison. A major strength of the book is that the coverage of the traditional topics about the shaping of the new government and crisis in foreign policy is combined with chapters on race, slavery, the economy and westward expansion, revealing both the strengths and weaknesses of the government and society that came into being after the Revolution.

Key features include:

• Combines extensive research with the best recent scholarship on the period
• A balanced account of the contributions of the leading personalities
• Impressive coverage is given to questions of race and territorial expansion
• Chapter One provides a concise and lucid account of the state of American politics and society in 1789
• Extensive chapter bibliographies

The work will be welcomed by students studying the early republic as well as general readers interested in a stimulating and informative account of the early years of the American nation.

Chapter 1
The United States in 1789

The old Confederation Congress had decided that the government under the new Constitution would begin in New York on the first Wednesday in March, 1789. When that day arrived, neither House of Congress had the quorum that was needed. It was 6 April before a sufficient number of representatives and senators assembled to fulfill their constitutional duty of opening and counting the ballots for the office of president. There had never been any doubt about the result of the presidential vote. All 69 presidential electors who voted had given their vote to George Washington. In leading the armies to victory in the War ofIndependence, Washington had achieved a legendary status. When the delegates at Philadelphia had created a powerful presidency, they had no other candidate in mind. In a time of crisis, they expected him to preserve the republic that he had made possible.

Although there was a desperate need for the new government to begin governing, there was still further delay. This was an America with means of communication inferior to that of the Roman Empire. It took a week for the news of the election result to be carried to Mount Vernon, and another week for Washington to reach New York for his inauguration. Finally on 30 April Washington was inaugurated. The world was now to discover whether the dream of a federal republic over an extensive area could succeed.

From 1781 the Articles of Confederation had set in place a formal national government, but much of the power had been left in the hands of the individual states. With no power of direct taxation and no control over commerce, the Confederation government had become bankrupt. It could not pay its debts, or even the interest on the debts, and did not have the means to raise the military forces necessary to achieve its ambitions in the Mississippi Valley. It dealt with foreign powers from a position of weakness. By the late 1780s many of the leaders who had led the United States to independence believed that the new republic was in danger of collapse, and thought that only a new and more powerful central government would enable the new nation to reach its full potential.

At Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, delegates to the Constitutional Convention had attempted to write a constitution that would give the new federal government the powers that the Confederation government had lacked; powers that would enable it to tackle the host of problems that faced the new nation both at home and abroad. Unlike its predecessor, this new federal government could tax and control commerce, and had a potentially powerful chief executive, but it was uncertain whether those who had ardently resisted the yielding of such powers to a central authority would cooperate in making the new system work. Ratification had been a contentious process, and the convention votes had been extremely close in Virginia and New York. Members of state conventions had suggested constitutional amendments that they thought essential, particularly the incorporation of a bill of rights. If the new government was to gain acceptance, these concerns would have to be addressed.

The choosing of a vice-president had also demonstrated that the hopes that all would rally behind a unified national government were likely to be disappointed. The Constitution had provided that there would be no separate vote for vice-president; whoever finished second to the presidential choice would serve in that position. Alexander Hamilton had used his influence to have John Adams of Massachusetts put forward as the choice of the Federalist supporters of the new Constitution, but Adams had received the vote of only 34 electors. State and local interests flourished to the extent that over 20 other men received votes.¹

In the discussions surrounding the writing and ratification of the Constitution, there had been fear th.at a stronger centralized government would mean the arbitrary use of power, and a loss of both state and individual rights. Many had argued that creating a centralized government over a great area would mean that the nation would follow the path of Rome and move from republic to empire. They said that extensive, diverse areas, with a variety of different interests, could only be held together by a force that was incompatible with republican freedom. Montesquieu's statement that 'It is natural for a republic to have only a small territory; otherwise it cannot long subsist,' carried great weight for many in the revolutionary generation.²

The Federalists who had supported the Constitution had pointed out that Montesquieu had also said that a confederated republic could help solve the problem of size, and James Madison had argued that the creation of a representative rather than a direct democracy had made possible what had never been achieved before. A direct democracy, Madison argued, was confined to a small area because all of its citizens had to assemble to transact the business of government. The new American republic could extend over a vast area because the people had delegated governmental powers to their representatives.³ This argument was particularly necessary because the United States had already devised plans to advance government into the trans-Allegheny West. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had provided for a future three to five states between the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers, and it had been agreed that these states would be admitted to the Union on full equality with the original thirteen.

The fear that the combination of size and power at the center would transform the republic into an empire arose again in the state debates over ratification. Those who dissented from the approval to the Constitution given in the Pennsylvania ratifying convention argued that 'nothing short of the supremacy of despotic sway could connect and govern these United States under one government'. A Boston newspaper thundered in November 1787 that this new Constitution was 'nothing less than a hasty stride to Universal Empire in this Western World, flattering, very flattering, to young ambitious minds, but fatal to the liberties of the people'.⁴ Fears ofloss of state power were very great, and when the new government began its operations North Carolina and Rhode Island had still not agreed to enter the Union. North Carolina entered in November 1789, Rhode Island in May 1790.

The regional jealousies that had often near-paralysed the Confederation Congress had also emerged strongly in the debates on ratification. Throughout the 1780s the Northeast had shown concern cover the rapid advance of southern settlement into Kentucky and Tennessee; it feared a diversion of American interests away from Atlantic commerce. The author of the Massachusetts Letters of Agrippa argued that commerce, not power, was the true bond of union, and that people were better governed by local laws and institutions. 'The idle and dissolute inhabitants of the south,' he wrote, 'require a different regimen from the sober and active people of the north.'⁵ Northeastern fears of southern influence in the new government were increased by southern spokesmen like David Ramsay of South Carolina, who argued in a published address on the new Constitution that those in his state who feared the new document should remember that southern influence was constantly increasing because of their western lands. The Southern states, he wrote, had extensive areas ofland in process of settlement, while northeastern land was small in area and so poor in quality that residents were constantly leaving. 'In fifty years,' he prophesied, 'it is probable that the southern states will have a great ascendency over the Eastern.'⁶ Those who governed under the new Constitution had to satisfy many who still thought locally rather than nationally.

The territory of the United States in 1789 was indeed great by European standards. It stretched from the Atlantic in the east to the Mississippi in the west, from the Great Lakes in the north to a disputed boundary north of the Gulf of Mexico in the south. The region west of the Mississippi, and the land along the Gulf belonged to Spain. To the north was British Canada. There was an intense American interest in the region beyond the Alleghenies. The inability of the old Confederation government to protect those settlers who had advanced beyond the mountains had helped to destroy it, and in the spring of 1789, when the new government was beginning its operations in New York, settlers were laying the foundations of new states in Kentucky and Tennessee, and trying to move beyond the Ohio River into what was to become the state of Ohio. The Indian tribes of the Mississippi Valley were making every effort to protect their lands from the intrusion of the Europeans.

The embattled areas west of the Alleghenies by no means represented the limits of America's ambitions. When Jedidiah Morse issued his American Geography in 1789 he wrote that 'we cannot but anticipate the period, as not far distant, when the AMERICAN EMPIRE will comprehend millions of souls, west of the Mississippi.'⁷ The Americans of the revolutionary generation had ardently defended localism while dreaming of continental empire. Even the disappointments and confusions of the post-1783 years had not crushed a belief in American destiny on the North American continent.

In the post-revolutionary years these dreams of continental republican empire had been confronted with the reality of an impotent central government that could not achieve even limited objectives across the Alleghenies. The central government had wanted to ensure the safety of settlers moving into the Mississippi Valley, and to ease its financial problems by selling the public lands that had been ceded to it by the states. Lands had been sold, but settlers had been under constant attack. In 1789 Indian resistance west of the mountains remained unbroken.

Problems of settlement in the Mississippi Valley were compounded because the United States had failed to establish its territorial sovereignty over the boundaries given to it at the end of the Revolution. In the North, the national boundary was supposed to run through the Great Lakes, but the British had retained posts within American territory at a number of key spots including Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac. The Great Lakes were a British preserve and, from their posts within American territory, the British influenced the Indians of the region, supplying them and encouraging them to resist the advancing American pioneers. Prevented by lack of money from raising more than pitifully few troops, the old Confederation government had failed totally in asserting its authority in the Northwest.

In the Southwest, a similar situation existed, but one which was even more destructive to American interests. At the end of the Revolution separate British treaties with the Americans and the Spanish had caused boundary confusion. The United States claimed that their boundary in the south was the 31st parallel, but the Spanish on the Gulf sent ships up the Mississippi far to the north of that line, had troops on what the Americans considered their territory and, like the British in the north, encouraged the Indians within American territory to resist the American advance. The Spanish territories of East and West Florida stretched along the Gulf beyond the modern limits of Florida to the Mississippi River. The Spanish control over the lower Mississippi and the port of New Orleans created a critical problem for the United States. The new American settlers in the trans-Allegheny West could not send their produce to market eastwards over the mountains; the difficult terrain and lack of roads made the cost prohibitive. Their way to market was by water. Pioneers settled on the tributaries of the Mississippi, and sent their goods down that river through New Orleans to the sea. This trade had been irregular since 1783, because the Spanish had refused to sign a commercial treaty with the United States. American dreams of a republican empire in the Mississippi Valley depended on markets, and the markets could only be reached by way of the Gulf of Mexico.

When Jedidiah Morse wrote of his expectation that millions of Americans would cross the Mississippi River, he was anticipating the removal of Spanish power on the North American continent. 'The God of nature,' he wrote, 'never intended that some of the best part of the earth should be inhabited by the subjects of a monarch, 4,000 miles from them.'⁸ Many now hoped that the new government with greatly enhanced powers would ensure that a Mississippi Valley dominated by the British and the Spanish would be a futile European dream.

The Confederation government's inability to ensure commercial advantages for its citizens in the Southwest was only a symptom of a larger problem. As the Confederation had no power over commerce, it had been unable to control the individual commercial aims of the states and unable to command the respect of the European powers. The Confederation government had been unable to negotiate commercial treaties with either Great Britain or Spain. American overseas commerce was flourishing, but American ambitions far exceeded what had been achieved.

In 1790 the first national census listed a total American population of 3,929,214. The American Indians, who were numerous over much of the western region of the nation, were not included in this tally, but the 700,000 African American slaves were. There were also some 60,000 free blacks. Africans and their descendants thus composed about one-sixth of the total population. Estimates based on family names indicate that nearly 90 per cent of the free white population was from the British Isles, mostly from England but with substantial numbers from Scotland and Ireland. The next largest group was of German origin. Immigration was not to have any striking effect on this mix in the next 30 years. Until 1819 no accurate records were kept, but estimates place the number of European immigrants in the years from 1783 to 1815 at no more than 250,000. The most important single immigrant group in these years - exceeding any single European nationality - were Africans. Over 200,000 new slaves arrived in the United States between 1790 and 1810. The official ending of the foreign slave trade in January 1808 slowed this African increase to a trickle.⁹

The impact of immigration was minor, but the natural population increase was dramatic - over 5,300,000 in 1800, more than 7,230,000 in 1810, and an estimated 8,500,000 in 1815. For much of the eighteenth century, the pattern was for an American wife to become pregnant within a year of her marriage, and to bear a child every two or three years until she was dead or beyond her years of fertility. Colonial American birth rates were much higher than those of Western Europe. American women married young, and brides were in high demand.

The birth rate gradually declined in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but in the years following the Revolution brides were frequently pregnant before they were married; in rural New England almost one-third. There were frequent deaths of babies and young children. In 1790 those white men and women who survived until they were 20 had a life expectancy of 45; that of African Americans was as much as ten years lower. Medical care offered few solutions. Hampered by a lack of knowledge of the s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The United States in 1789
• 2. The Shaping of Government
• 3. Neutral Rights
• 4. The Rise of Political Parties
• 5. The Adams Administration
• 6. The Economy
• 7. The Advance of Settlement
• 8. Jefferson in Power
• 9. Race and Slavery
• 10. Louisiana and the Politics of Expansion
• 11. Foreign Trials
• 12. The Failure of Economic Coercion
• 13. The Coming of War
• 14. The Invasion of Canada
• 15. Crisis
• Conclusion
• Guide to Further Reading
• Index