Towards Religious Toleration

Religious Pluralism

Pre-Rev churches were often supported with public funds

  • Discrimination against minority faiths

  • 25k to 40k Catholics, 2k to 3k Jews

Catholic prejudice diminished through the American Revolution

  • Alliance with France and Spain

  • Maryland Catholic right to worship

Haym Salomon - financier of the military

  • 650k (374 million today)

New state constitutions often required affirmation of faith/belief in God

  • Not a requirement of a specific denomination

  • General Christianity

States disestablished official churches

  • Some continued to allocate funds to support Protestant denominations

The Founders and Religion

Religion as the foundation of public morality

Protect religious freedom from state control

Jefferson and the “wall of separation” between church and state

  • Letter to Danbury Baptists (1802)

  • DBA wanted reassurance that religion was a God-given right, not a government-granted one, and therefore beyond government control.

Religious Liberty

Protecting religion from the state produced a flourishing of faiths

  • A line between public authority and private life

The influence of religion increased after AmRev

Defining Economic Freedom

Toward Free Labor

The middle ground between free and unfree labor shrank

  • Indentured servitude was near its end by 1800

  • Apprenticeships on the decline

  • Paid domestic servants increased

Republican citizenship

Free labor - wage labor or farm/shop owner

Further distinction of the enslaved

Economic Freedom

Saw equality as equal opportunity

  • Not as a condition or outcome

A lack of economic resources was to lack freedom

VA ended restrictive inheritance laws

  • Entail - inheritance limited to a specified line of heirs

  • Primogeniture - land passed entirely to the eldest son

Free Trade

Fixing wages and prices (artificially) to control inflation

  • Merchants resisted due to resisted due to realities of the market

Many argued for free-trade policies

Real costs/value based on supply and demand

Morality and Wealth

Adam Smith - Scottish economist and philosopher

The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)

  • Ethical and methodological underpinning

  • Self-interest, free exchange, sympathy

The Wealth of Nations (1776)

With little gov. intervention, of a free market would regulate itself

Natural decrease in costs through innovation anf liberty

The Limits of Liberty

Colonial Loyalists

Loyalists - those who retained their allegiance to the crown

  • 20-25% of the population

  • 20k fought for the British

  • In every colony

Many were arrested, and property was seized by the states

60k left US post-war (went to GB, Canada, West Indies)

Native Americans and Freedom

Western lands seen as fruits of victory

  • Expansion no longer in-check by GB

The Treaty of Paris ceded all British land east of the Mississippi River

NA used the language of the revolution to argue for their rights

  • Territorial sovereignty, land policies, and trade

The Language of Slavery and Freedom

Revolutionary language juxtaposed freedom and slavery

  • Slavery as a political category

  • Unironically used as a revolutionary rhetorical argument

  • Many are aware of and highlight moral contradictions

Abolition and Its Obstacles

Most famous people owned slaves at one point in their lives

  • Inheritance, purchase, manumission

VA made it difficult to emancipate the enslaved

  • Debt, inheritance, dowry

  • Financial support, freed must leave the state

Property rights arguments

Arguments for Abolition

Abolition became a focus for political debate

Antislavery arguments on moral and economic grounds

Freedom petitions - arguments for liberty presented in courts by enslaved African Americans

  • Led to the abolition in northern states

  • 1777-1804: VT, PA, MA, NH, CT, RI, NY, NJ

  • Northwest Territory (1787)

Black Founders

Lemeul Haynes

  • MA militiaman and minister

James Armistead Lafayette

  • Served as sa py for Washington

James Forten

  • Soldier, businessman, abolitionist

Richard Allen

  • Established the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church

Revolutionary Women

Propelled women into new forms of public activism

Republican motherhood

  • Women played an indispensable role in training future citizens

  • The foundation of national morality in the family

Encouraged the expansion of education opportunities for women

  • A duty to teach their sons

  • Companionate marriage

Founding Mothers

Abigail Adams

  • Confidante and advisor to her husband

  • A vocal advocate for women’s rights

Merty Otis Warren

  • Writer who argued for the Revolution

Betsy Ross

  • Credited with designing/sewingthe American flag

Phillis Wheatly

  • Formerly enslaved poet whose work advocated for American Independence

  • First published African American poet