AP U.S. history exam review

1491-1607 European Colonization of the New World

The arrival of Europeans was not the beginning of American history.
Native Americans' lack of machines, metalwork, gunpowder, Christianity, or written language became a central justification for European conquest and colonization.
Native American society was organized without private property, material wealth, or marital inequality, unlike in Europe.
Europeans painted this cultural difference as “barbaric” and justified the uprooting of indigenous communities as saving them from savagery.

Spanish Colonization

In 1492, the Spanish crown (Ferdinand and Isabella) wanted to control the natives who lived in “discovered” lands and extract wealth from them.
Christopher Columbus pioneered the Spanish domination of South America.
Spanish conquistadors, motivated by wealth, glory, and Catholic conversion, conquered the Aztec and Inca empires in South America due to their more advanced European weaponry and the introduction of smallpox to the Native population.
Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish priest and Native sympathizer, asserted in his 1542 Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies that his fellow Spaniards used the Christian faith as an excuse to fuel their violent megalomania.
The unusually cruel treatment by the Spanish conquistadors resulted in the infamous Black Legend of Spanish Colonization, an anti-Spanish, anti-Catholic propaganda piece criticizing Spain for its sins in the New World.
Later, English settlers would use the Black Legend to justify their own settlements.
Ironically, the English would become crueler to Native Americans than the Spanish were.

French and Dutch Colonization

Like the Spanish, the French and Dutch brought Christianity and European legal systems, technology, family relations, and economy to the New World.
In order to avoid a Black Legend 2.0, the French and Dutch took less violating approaches to American settlement.
New France, with its emphasis on fur trade rather than agricultural settlement, relied on friendly relations with Native Americans.
The French in the New World respected Native religions to keep the peace, though they promised indigenous peoples full French citizenship if they converted to Catholicism.
The Dutch came to the New World to extract profit, not to conquer or settle.
Having recently won independence from Spain, the Netherlands employed two freedoms not recognized anywhere else in Europe: freedom of religion and freedom of the press.
New Netherland respected these freedoms.

The Columbian Exchange

The largest factor contributing to European success was the Columbian Exchange.
Christopher Columbus’s arrival brought the deadly European disease of smallpox to the Americas and New World crops to Europe.
Smallpox decimated hundreds of thousands of indigenous Americans and greatly contributed to the success of Spanish colonization.
Because of smallpox’s effectiveness, colonizers from Europe switched from enslaving natives to importing slaves from Africa to work on their plantations in the West Indies.
This brought about the Atlantic slave trade, in which enslaved peoples were bought in Africa and sent to American plantations, where the fruits of their labor were sent to Europe.

1607-1754 Chesapeake Colonies

The Chesapeake housed the joint-stock colonies (a.k.a. charter colonies or corporate colonies), where independent contractors joined together to place funds into the colony with the hope that they would obtain a return on their investment.
In 1618, the Virginia Company established a colonial recruitment policy called the headright system, which offered 50 acres of land for every person a settler paid to bring over.
This system appeared in the other Chesapeake colonies once they were established.
Englishmen with financial resources took advantage of this system and established themselves early on as the colony’s social and political elite, causing an emergence of numerous large estates very quickly.
These estates were worked on by indentured servants (generally single, young, poor Englishmen).
They served as enslaved workers for 5-10 years with the hope that they could acquire land at the end of their servitude.
Because of the huge poor population in England, nearly ⅔ of English settlers migrated to the colonies under indentured servitude contracts.
Servants rarely acquired property upon finishing their contract; either they weren’t given sufficient freedom dues, the colony ran out of land, or they died before finishing their service.
The first shipment of African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619.
Colonists became more dependent on the Transatlantic slave trade than indentured servitude later in the Chesapeake’s development.
In the latter half of the 17th century, hundreds of thousands of slaves were transported across the Middle Passage from West Africa to the West Indies and English North America.
In this triangular trade, African monarchs received English manufactured goods like guns in exchange for their slaves.
Then, colonial slaves would produce products like tobacco and it would be sent to England for distribution in Europe.
As black slavery overtook white indentured servitude in the English colonies, colonial authorities quickly adapted to promote white supremacy and restrict African slaves.
This allowed for the conquering of even more native lands and a growing class of white North American tobacco plantation owners.
In the 1660s, the Virginia House of Burgesses made it so children born of a free parent and a slave parent took the freedom status of their mother (so, sexually abusing enslaved women became profitable for slaveowners).

Virginia

The first successful English colony in America was founded in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.
It was founded by the Virginia Company with the hopes that it would generate profit for its joint-stock investors.
In winter 1609-1610, Jamestown faced the “starving time,” in which about ⅔ of the colonists perished due to disease, drought, and starvation.
It took the strict discipline of colonial governor John Smith to bring the colonists back up onto their feet.
A persistent opposition to the Jamestown colonists was the Powhatan Confederacy, the Native American mega-tribe inhabiting the Chesapeake area.
This conflict culminated in the Anglo-Powhatan wars (1609, 1622) in which the English victory destroyed Powhatan authority in the area.
As a resolution to these conflicts, Native Americans were granted reservation land, one of the earliest examples of this practice.
Successful tobacco planter John Rolfe married Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, to assist with the spread of Christianity to Native Americans and assist with the planting of tobacco on native soil.
Tobacco became Virginia’s main cash crop and substitute for gold.
The growth of the tobacco industry attracted even more indentured servants.
In 1619, the Virginia House of Burgesses was established.
It was the first representative government in English North America, though it hardly reflected the will of the majority.
Members of the House of Burgesses were elected by white men who possessed a certain amount of property; the representatives themselves were gentry.
The Uprising of 1622, a bloody war between English colonists and Native Americans, occurred when it became clear that the English were planning to expand their colony into native territory.
This uprising resulted in the Virginia Company’s relinquishing of their charter to the English crown; Virginia became the first royal colony.
When Governor William Berkeley would not support the colonists in attempting to eradicate Native Americans from the frontier, white settlers vented their frustrations by burning Jamestown in Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion (1676).
In the years following the rebellion, the colonies shifted away from indentured servant labor and toward imported West African slave labor.
In 1705, the House of Burgesses enacted a new slave code that embedded white supremacy into the law.
Virginia had devolved from a society with slaves into a slave society, where slavery stood at the center of the economic process.

Maryland

Maryland was established in 1632 as a proprietary colony under Cecilius Calvert (a.k.a. Lord Baltimore), son of a late favorite of King Charles I.
Calvert, a Catholic, hoped that Maryland could be a peaceful land of both Catholics and Protestants.
Calvert issued the Maryland Act of Toleration in 1649, granting religious freedom to all Christian colonists.
The English colonies of Virginia and Maryland followed similar patterns: high death rate, high immigration of indentured servants, and use of land for tobacco farming.
The headright system and freedom dues fulfilled Englishmen in their desire for property, but this rapid takeover caused conflict with the native population.
The English Civil War and King James II’s overthrow stirred up Maryland colonists, and the colony’s history of religious toleration terminated when rebels established a Protestant government and forced the Catholic proprietor to convert to Anglicanism.

New York

Dutch merchants founded the for-profit colony of New Amsterdam in 1624, allowing settlement for anyone who could turn them a profit, even Jews and Quakers.
This colony respected freedom of religion and freedom of the press.
When the English took over in 1664, the population grew substantially, but English imperial rule also reduced the amount of freedom in the colony.
While women and free blacks were previously able to conduct business, the English takeover erased their economic rights.
In 1683, after decades of complaints from New York colonists who claimed they were being denied the “rights of Englishmen,” the Charter of Liberties and Privileges was established.
This allowed male property owners and freemen to partake in elections every three years.
Trial by jury, security of property, and religious toleration of Protestants were reinstated.

Pennsylvania

King Charles II granted the Quaker William Penn his own colony in 1681.
The colony was established to reflect Quaker values.
These values included religious freedom, an absence of a tax-supported official church, equality of all persons (including women, blacks, and natives) before God, and good relations with Native Americans.
Penn’s 1682 Charter of Liberty offered “Christian liberty” to all who did not use their freedom to promote immoral behavior.
Penn purchased indigenous territory before selling it to colonists.
Instead of granting land to settlers, it was sold at cheap prices.
He offered refuge and protection to Native Amercians driven out of other colonies, and his suffrage policy made most men eligible to vote.

New England Colonies

Strict Calvinists, the Puritans believed in predestination and hard work.
They left England because they felt the Anglican Church was too reminiscent of the Catholic Church, deeming it “impure.”
Protestants were individualistic, compared to the Catholic’s emphasis on the collective.
Unlike the dispersed plantation-centered society of the Chesapeake, the leaders of Puritan New England organized the colony in self-governing towns, which each had common land, democratically-distributed property, and schools.
Literacy was necessary so every resident could read and interpret the Bible, a key component of Protestantism.
Also unlike the Chesapeake, English Puritans came to English North America in the Great Migration as families and their university-trained ministers, not as single, poor indentured servants.
The Pequot War (1637) and King Philip’s War (1676) were two wars with the same cause: the culmination of existing tensions between the English colonists and Native Americans in Puritan New England.
The relationship between the two deteriorated as the Puritans continued to expand their settlements aggressively and as European ways increasingly disrupted native life.
Pequot War: New England soldiers massacred the Pequot tribe in 1637, selling the surviving natives to Caribbean slavery (a fate worse than death).
The European dominance in warfare convinced colonists that they were on a holy quest and that natives were unworthy of sharing the land.
King Philip’s War: The Puritans attacked multiple Native American settlements, indiscriminately killing the men, women, and children of the villages.
When there seemed to be no end to their brutality and expansion, Wampanoag leader Metacom (a.k.a. “King Philip”) launched an attack against the English, destroying numerous colonist towns.
However, in the end, the English prevailed.
Following the war, the Puritans vilified Native Americans as bloodthirsty savages.

Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was chartered in 1629 by King Charles I.
The Puritans who settled in New England fled England due to their unhappiness with the Anglican Church; they believed it had not separated itself enough from the Catholic Church and still needed purification.
They were called Congregationalists because they thought congregations should determine leadership and worship structures, not bishops.
More than anything else, Puritans wanted freedom to obey God’s will through self-government.
However, this freedom was incompatible with other freedoms; Puritan societies employed restrictions on speech, religion, and personal behavior.
In order to vote or hold office, one had to be a church member, and in order to be a church member, one had to be a “visible saint.”
John Winthrop was the Puritan leader and governor of Massachusetts.
He declares in his 1630 sermon A Model of Christian Charity that his new Puritan community is like a “city upon a hill.”
This speech is the basis of American exceptionalism -- the idea that America is so godly and special that it is a model to other nations (as long as Americans are unified).
Anne Hutchinson was banished from Massachusetts in 1638 after being accused of and tried for sedition.
During her trial, Winthrop called her a “woman not fit for our society.”
She believed that New England Puritan ministers emphasized the “covenant of works” too much over the “covenant of grace” and claimed to have had a direct divine experience.
Though literacy was a fundamental Protestant value, literate Puritan women like Hutchinson presented a challenge to the male ministers’ authority.
She preached to the elites of her area, her sermons becoming nearly as popular as Winthrop’s.
She and her followers were called antinomians.
Massachusetts Puritans believed in self-government, not equality.
Only church members (people who had experienced divine grace) could contribute to government.
As the colony aged, official church membership declined, as new people born in Massachusetts weren’t able to cite a conversion experience or necessary religious commitment.
The 1662 Halfway Covenant made it so ancestry was the determining factor for voting rights.
In 1689, James II combined New York, East and West Jersey, Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and Rhode Island into a single super-colony: the Dominion of New England.
Sir Edmund Andros (former governor of New York) ruled this colony.
His actions alienated everyone; he threatened both English liberties and the church-state relationship at the center of Puritan order.
After the Dominion of New England was terminated in the same year it was established, Massachusetts was forced to abide by the English Toleration Act of 1689.
Also, the governor of the colony became appointed by England, not elected by the people.
Puritan communities were often superstitious (as were most European communities), however the 1692 Salem Witch Trials highlighted the extremes of religious fanaticism.
Many of the accusers who prosecuted the suspected witches had been traumatized by the Anglo-Indian wars on the frontier and by unprecedented political and cultural changes in New England (like the Dominion).
Relying on their belief in witchcraft to help make sense of their changing world, Puritan authorities executed 19 people and caused the deaths of several others.

Plymouth

The Pilgrims arrived in North America in 1620.
They were Separatists (more extreme than the Puritans) who wanted complete separation from the Anglican Church.
Before their arrival at Plymouth, the Pilgrims created the Mayflower Compact, in which they agreed to obey “just and equal laws” enacted by democratically-elected representatives.
William Bradford became the governor of Plymouth in 1621.
They survived their first winter thanks to the assistance of Squanto, a friendly local Native American, but Plymouth was soon consumed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Connecticut

Thomas Hooker established Hartford in 1636.
It was similar to Massachusetts except it did not require men to be church members to vote.
Conversely, New Haven colonists wanted an even closer connection between church and state.
The two were united in 1662 as Connecticut.
The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639) was the first constitution in America.
It established a representative government in Connecticut, featuring a legislature elected by a popular vote and a governor elected by the legislature.

Rhode Island

Roger Williams, similarly to Anne Hutchinson, was a dissenting Puritan who left Massachusetts.
Williams founded Rhode Island in 1636, where he welcomed fellow dissenting Puritans.
He insisted that church and state be separated, and that individuals should be able to practice any religion.
He also believed that Christianity was corrupted by being so close to government; he rejected the popular conviction that the Puritans were on a divine mission to spread the faith.
He also wrote favorably about Native Americans.

Southern Colonies

With the Native American population decimated by disease and white indentured servants unwilling to cultivate sugar, West African slaves were brought to the West Indies and the southern colonies of British America during the 17th century.
However, slavery developed more slowly in North America than in the West Indies, where the enslaved black population far outnumbered the free white population.
During this time, the most important social distinction in the mainland colonies was not between whites and blacks, but between plantation owners and everyone else.
Both the Chesapeake and Southern colonies had rich soil and temperate climates which made large-scale plantation farming possible.
Both regions had an agriculture-based economy in which cash crops like tobacco, indigo, rice, and cotton were cultivated for trade.
The importation of African slaves quickly became vital to plantation cultivation.

Carolina

Carolina was founded in 1663 as a barrier to Spanish expansion north of Florida.
Early Carolinan settlers participated in the mass enslavement of Native Americans or forced their expulsion to Florida.
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina (1669) proposed a feudal society with hereditary nobility, but also an elected assembly, religious toleration, and a generous headright system.
This proposal was never followed through.
Slavery, not feudalism, made Carolina a hierarchial society.
In 1739, about 20 armed slaves participated in the Stono Rebellion, burning and plundering the settlements they came across on their march to Spanish Florida.
This was the realization of the long-feared idea that slaves (who vastly outnumbered slaveowners) would rise up and rebel.
Eventually, all the rebels were either killed or returned to slavery.
This resulted in a stricter slave code. Slaves were now given Sabbath as a day to rest, but they were banned from purchasing alcohol and becoming literate.

Georgia

James Oglethorpe, a philanthropist who advocated for the abolition of slavery, founded the colony of Georgia in 1732.
He hoped to establish a haven for persecuted Protestant sects and the poor and destitute.
Oglethorpe originally banned slavery and liquor, but the colonists won an elected assembly in 1751, bringing liquor and slaves into the colony, turning it into a miniature South Carolina.

1754-1800 The Enlightenment

Thinkers of the Enlightenment believed in progress, freedom of thought and expression, education of the masses (including women), liberty to all men (battle against absolutism), and individualism.
Enlightenment thought challenged the prevailing patterns of thought with respect to social order, institutions of government, and the role of faith.
Thomas Paine, an American, wrote Common Sense on the eve of the American Revolution, calling for a democratic system based on frequent elections and a written constitution.
John Locke wrote The Social Contract, which states that the government is created to protect its citizens’ natural rights of life, liberty, and property, believing that the “divine right of kings” was illegitimate.
Thomas Hobbes wrote Leviathan to argue that only an absolutist government is able to save man from his natural state of savagery and selfishness.
Secularism argued that government and other institutions should exist entirely separate from religion and the Catholic Church.
Religious tolerance also became more widespread.
Deism is the belief in a distant God but denial of organized religion, basing one’s belief on the light of reason; Benjamin Franklin was a deist.

The First Great Awakening

The First Great Awakening was the antithesis to Enlightenment thought and the general colonial emphasis on commerce in the 18th century.
Revivalists rejected stoic Calvinist predestination in favor of spiritual salvation and questioned the social and political status quo existing in the colonies, examining the relationship between church and state.
Puritan leaders dominated New England in the 1600s, but their influence declined by the 1700s.
These leaders were unhappy with the new denominations of Protestantism and saw new rival preachers as challenges to their already waning power.
George Whitefield, a Calvinist, sparked the religious revival in New England, inspiring the emergence of numerous Dissenting churches.
While he came to America disgusted with slavery, he held 50 slaves by the end of his life, which he claimed was necessary for building his orphanage and the betterment of the Georgia colony.

The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763)

Both Great Britain and France claimed ownership of the Ohio River Valley, and plantation owners in Virginia wanted to settle westward to expand the tobacco industry.
This conflict led to the start of the Seven Years’ War.
The war was fought in colonial America; British and French soldiers and colonists as well as Native Americans participated.
The Seven Years’ War can be viewed as the “first world war” and the first major imperial war, being fought over land holdings far away from both participants.
Mercantilism is a system of economic regulations aimed at increasing the power of the state based on the belief that a nation’s international power was based on its wealth, specifically its supply of gold and silver.
Colonies played an important role in mercantilism; they not only produced raw materials but also bought back finished products from the mother country.
At the war’s end in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, Britain won all of France’s land holdings in colonial America.
Consequently, the Native Americans who had fought for the French in order to maintain independence from both empires and retain the middle ground also lost all their land to Britain.
In 1754, Benjamin Franklin proposed the (rejected) Albany Plan of Union, which was the first proposal of colonial unification for the purpose of defense.
In the Albany Plan, the central government would consist of a president appointed by the British Crown and a Grand Council of a few delegates (proportional to population) from each state.
Franklin made the Join, or Die political cartoon as an attempt to popularize his plan.
In 1763, a force of 300 members of different Native American tribes led by Chief Pontiac attempted to forcefully stop British encroachment on their territory in Pontiac’s Rebellion.
They were inspired by teachings of universal Native unity and rejection of dependence upon Europeans.

The American Revolution (1775-1783)

Causes of American Dissent

The Navigation Acts passed between 1650 and 1673 were largely ignored by colonists, and England was ineffective in enforcing them.
They established three rules of colonial trade: first, trade must be carried out only on English ships; second, all goods imported into the colonies had to pass through ports in England; third, specific valuable goods, such as tobacco, could be exported only to England.
The Dominion of New England (1686-1692) was established by King Charles II during the English Civil War as an attempt to tighten England’s control on its colonies.
The Dominion merged all the colonies into one administration governed by Sir Edmund Andros.
This was universally resisted by the colonies, who wished to regain their old royal charters and self-government.
When King James II fled the English throne, the Dominion was quickly overthrown.
Salutory neglect: From the early to mid-18th century, the British government exercised loose trade regulations and minimal supervision of internal affairs on its North American colonies.
After the Seven Years’ War, this was replaced by tighter reigns.
In 1734, New York Weekly journalist John Peter Zenger was accused of libel (published defamation) by the royal governor of New York but was acquitted by the jury, becoming a symbol of freedom of the press.
Colonists wanted to expand westward into the new lands gained from France after the Seven Years’ War in order to create more settlements, but fearing conflicts with Native Americans, Britain passed the Proclamation of 1763.
The proclamation prohibited movement west of the Appalachian Mountains, upsetting many colonists who wanted the land to increase their wealth.
This was widely ignored, and thousands of colonists defied the law, moving west to claim land for themselves.
Also in 1763, the British issued writs of assistance to crack down on smuggling.
These were documents which served as a general search warrant, allowing customs officials to enter any ship or building that they suspected for any reason might hold smuggled goods.
Britain needed funds after the Seven Years’ War, and Parliament believed that imposing taxes on the previously-untaxed colonies seemed the best way to reimburse itself.
The Stamp Act, enacted in 1765, imposed a direct tax on all printed documents (including legal papers) in the North American colonies, affecting every colonist of every social class.
The act started a fierce debate over whether the British Parliament had the right to tax the North American colonies solely for the purpose of raising revenue.
Colonial delegates convened at the Stamp Act Congress in 1765, the first unified colonial response to British policy.
Colonial thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin and Samuel Adams were most prominent in the debate against the Stamp Act.
This opposition birthed the phrase “no taxation without representation,” which the British countered with the idea of virtual representation (members of Parliament were obligated to defend the interests of British subjects and colonists alike).
The Stamp Act upset the colonists so much that Parliament was ultimately forced to repeal it.
Parliament passed the Declaratory Act in 1766, which asserted Britain’s ultimate right of control over the colonies.
The Townshend Acts unleashed a new wave of protest in the colonies after the Stamp Act was withdrawn, taxing all imports of glass, lead, paint, and tea, sending new customs officials to the colonies to collect, and creating courts of admiralty to prosecute violators and smugglers.
These acts were especially detested in Boston, Massachusetts.
Boston merchants signed a nonimportation agreement, suspending all imports of British goods, setting the stage for the Boston Massacre.
The 1770 Boston Massacre intensified anti-British sentiment.
Paul Revere, an accomplished propagandist, produced the most famous depiction of the incident: British redcoats unpromptedly firing on an unarmed crowd of American workers.
This image was published in the Boston Gazette, fanning the flames of revolution in an already dissenting area.
In 1772, Boston revolutionary Samuel Adams employed a committee of correspondence to rally opposition to British policies, to educate the townspeople of Massachusetts about their constitutional rights and the British threats to those rights, and to encourage townspeople to become more politically active.
By 1774, every colonial assembly had created a committee of correspondence.
Also in 1772 was the British case Somerset v. Stewart, in which the Virginia slave James Somerset was brought to England by his master, where he promptly escaped.
When brought to court, the outcome was widely interpreted as outlawing slavery in Britain, striking fear into American slaveholders.
Parliament approved the Tea Act in 1773 as an effort to support the British East India Company, which was near bankruptcy, giving the Company a monopoly on tea importation to the colonies, and colonists were practically forced to buy their tea.
The Boston Tea Party was a direct response to the Tea Act in which the radical colonist society the Sons of Liberty willfully destroyed 342 crates of East India Company tea (modern worth: about $1.7$ million).
The British responded not by reforming their taxation policies, but by issuing the Coercive (Intolerable) Acts, which shut down Boston’s port and fined it for the tea destroyed in the Boston Tea Party, shut down the colony’s legislative assembly, sent British troops to occupy Boston, and authorized the newly-appointed governor to send indicted government officials away for trial.
The Quartering Act, approved at the same time as the Intolerable Acts, allowed British troops to be housed in private buildings.
This was not targeted solely at Massachusetts; it applied to all colonies.
In response to the Intolerable Acts, the colonies called for the First Continental Congress, which convened in late 1774 in support of Massachusetts and approved of a general boycott of British goods.
The Congress issued the Declaration of Colonial Rights and Grievances, which denied Parliament’s right to tax the colonies and rejected the stationing of troops in Boston.
This document, while it criticized England’s authority in the colonies, did not challenge colonial loyalty to the British Crown.
In his widely-distributed 1774 pamphlet Common Sense, Thomas Paine not only called for a written constitution, but also a democracy with frequent elections.
Additionally, he asserted that British imperial membership was a burden to the colonies, not a benefit, citing the Seven Years’ War as an example of the colonies suffering because of English affairs.

The British Empire Strikes Back

The battles of Lexington and Concord, fought in April 1775, were the first military clashes of the American Revolutionary War (the “shot heard ‘round the world”).
After the battle of Lexington, Paul Revere warned his fellow Patriots of the British encroachment.
The Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia shortly after the war with the British had begun, appointing George Washington commander of the Continental Army and authorizing raising the army through conscription.
Congress authorized the Olive Branch Petition in July 1775 as a last attempt at negotiation and reaffirmed the 13 colonies’ loyalty to the Crown.
The following day, Congress issued the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, which explained and justified the colonies’ decision to go to war, invalidating the Olive Branch Petition.
On July 4, 1776, Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, drafted by Thomas Jefferson, to Britain, asserting for the first time the colonies’ intention to be fully independent of the mother country.

The Articles of Confederation

Congress established itself as the central governing authority under the Articles of Confederation, which remained in force until 1788, the year of the first presidential election.
Under the Articles, the federal government lacked the power of taxation, had no authority to regulate commerce, and was powerless to resolve conflicts arising between states, but it could conduct foreign affairs, declare war, and make treaties.
This “government” consisted of a one-house body of delegates in which each state had a single vote; in order for a decision to be made, $\frac{9}{13}$ of the states had to agree.
In August 1786, Revolutionary war veteran Daniel Shays led an armed rebellion reminiscent of the Revolution to protest the unjust economic policies and political corruption of Massachusetts’s state legislature.
He and other war veterans-turned-farmers were taken to court for debts accrued while they were away fighting, but they were unable to pay them because they were left uncompensated for their service.
Shays’ Rebellion exposed the weakness of the Articles of Confederation and led many influential politicians to call for the strengthening of the federal government in order to put down future uprisings.
George Washington himself came out of retirement to promote a strong national government.
The rebellion sparked the debate over the proper scope and authority of the federal government that ultimately resulted in the creation of the U.S. Constitution.
The Articles government passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which set up a process to create 5 new states between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, outlawed slavery in all 5 of the new states, and acknowledged that Native Americans had a claim to the land and should be treated more fairly if the settlers wanted to avoid war.

The American Constitution

In 1787, delegates from 12 states (excluding Rhode Island) convened at the Constitutional Convention, initially aiming to revise the Articles of Confederation.
These delegates were wealthy, prominent, and educated, a small minority of the United States’ population.
James Madison proposed the Virginia Plan, which called for a two-house legislature in which representation would be based on population, supported by large states.
Small states opposed it and countered with the New Jersey Plan in which the legislature would have one house and each state would have one vote.
The two plans were combined in the Connecticut Compromise.
The legislative branch would have two houses, consisting of an upper house, the Senate, and a lower house, the House of Representatives.
Representation in the House would be based on population, and each state was allotted two seats in the Senate.
The office of the president would constitute the executive authority and was to be chosen by the electoral college.
The structure of government would be federalist in nature; governmental authority rests in the hands of both national and state governments.
It would consist of three independent branches with checks and balances: the legislature (Congress), the executive (president), and the judicial (Supreme Court).
The Supreme Court would adjudicate disputes between states, and Congress was authorized to levy taxes, declare war, raise an army, regulate interstate commerce, and draft laws consistent with the purpose of exercising these powers.
The Convention also addressed whether slaves should be counted in a state’s population for representation in Congress.
The Three-Fifths Compromise established that every 5 enslaved individuals would count as 3 for the purposes of legislative representation and taxation.
Similarly, the Constitution included a fugitive slave clause, requiring any escaped slave to be returned to their master, meaning that a slave couldn’t escape bondage by moving to a state where slavery was outlawed.
The Constitution’s opponents, mostly common people, feared that it would create a federal government that was too powerful and inevitably recreate the British tyranny that the Patriots had fought against in the American Revolution.
To appease these anti-federalists, a series of ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, was added to the document to ensure that the federal government would respect the natural rights of citizens.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were a collection of pro-ratification essays written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.
It argued that a strong national government was necessary and not an infringement on the people’s liberty.
It is regarded as the most authoritative source for determining the original intent of the framers of the U.S. Constitution.
In Federalist no. 10, Madison reflects on how to prevent rule by majority faction and advocates for the expansion of the United States into a large, commercial republic.

The Elections of 1788 and 1796

George Washington was elected America’s first president in 1788.
He was a Virginia plantation owner who served as general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
He strongly supported the ratification of the Constitution and backed the Federalists during his time as president.
In Washington’s farewell address, he warned the American people against forming divided political parties and developing entanglements with European countries.
Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s whiskey