Black Americans and the Challenge to Slavery

Gabriel’s Rebellion

• 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

Beliefs about African-Americans

• 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

Jeffersonian Republicanism

• 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 as President

• 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

Native American Power in the US

• 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

The War of 1812

• 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