Chapter 7: The Early Republic

Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery

A plan to end slavery was headed by an enslaved man by the name of Gabriel
Unsuccessful, but sent a message:
- To abolitionists: challenging slavery would be punished severely
- To white residents: free and enslaved people of color were capable of violent revolutions, and the suppression of the Haitian Revolution had failed

The Enlightenment led to the classification of the natural world, which divided people into racial “types”
Thomas Jefferson wrote in his “Notes in the State of Virginia” that Native Americans could be “improved” and that Black Americans were not capable of that improvement

Jefferson’s election was a win for non-elites
- He did not want the government to have direct control
- Politics of the masses, based on public opinions
- Voluntary bonds with the government
Women were pivotal in passing down Republican ideas
- Women were put in charge of the moral and political upbringing of children

Jefferson wanted to reduce taxes and cut the government’s budget
He authorized the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803
His foreign policies (i.e. the Embargo Act of 1807) outraged Federalists
- Closed American ports to avoid war, upholding American neutrality

Jeffersonian equality contrasted with a nation split by gender, class, race, and ethnicity
Indigenous peoples dominated social relations, providing vital trading partners, scouts, and allies
Shawnee leaders Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa created pan-Indian towns and called for unification + resistance
- Stressed the need for cultural and religious renewal
- Had witch hunts in the 1800s
- Not everyone wanted this pan-Indian confederacy
- Eventually failed

Stemmed from American entanglement in two distinct sets of international issues → American interests conflicting with those of the British Empire
- First, had to do with the nation’s desire to maintain its position as a neutral trading nation during the series of Anglo-French wars, which began in the aftermath of the French Revolution in 1793
- Second, was related to the older roots in the colonial and Revolutionary-era
Impressments, the practice of forcing American sailors to join the British Navy, was among the most important sources of conflict between the two nations
The War of 1812 was a conflict fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida
As Federalists had attempted two decades earlier, Democratic-Republican leaders after the War of 1812 advocated strengthening the government to strengthen the nation