Unit 1

City Upon a Hill

• John Winthrop gives a long sermon to the Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower and part of it is remembered as “The City Upon a Hill”

• Winthrop says that everybody is watching the Pilgrims, so they have to be pious and follow the rest of the group despite their personal beliefs, or else they’ll become laughing-stocks

  • They needed to stick together like a family to survive

  • Winthrop attempted to create a sense of pride to keep the group unified

• Pilgrims were on a mission not just to be able to practice their version of religion but to show the world that they were the purest worshippers of God, except they needed to be extremely pious to be a city upon a hill

  • a city upon a hill - they’ll be put on a pedestal for being role models for the rest of the world

• Mentions “the eyes of all people are upon us”, adding to the feeling of needing to be seen as legitimate before being seen as role models

• Shows the minds of people - everybody was extremely devout and so many documents mention God

• The Puritans feel like they’re similar to the Israelites because they leave England and a tyrannous king and see themselves as new Israelites heading over the Atlantic to the new Promised Land

  • The God of Israel is a guide, like how Moses led the Israelites out of tyranny towards the Promised Land

  • They believe they need to keep being unified to succeed and need to fight their “nature” of being flawed and prone to disaster

• Covenant - a sacred agreement

  • Puritans follow God’s word so God provides the promised land

• Still important today because post-WW2 America was seen as the seen as the city upon a hill, leading the rest of the world that’s been devastated by war

• American Exceptionalism - America is a unique nation unlike anywhere else

  • Critiqued for self-centeredness, but there’s the counter-argument our fundamental philosophy is unique

Declaration of Independence

• Thomas Jefferson is the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, but he technically wrote it with a small committee

• “Law of Nature and of Nature’s God” - the belief that humans can use their reason to govern themselves, which was revolutionary in a world still ruled by the power of divine right, and is based upon human instinct and beliefs discovered by reason

• “All men are created equal” - saying no more feudalism, no one is born with the automatic right to rule over others. However, it’s heavily criticized because America has slavery, and slaves are not treated as equals

• “Pursuit of Happiness” - Jefferson was inspired by Aristotle’s book of Ethics that everybody aims for something in life and that they should focus not on feeling good but on being good

• “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” - cutting all political connection to Great Britain and risking their lives for freedom

• Unalienable Rights - rights people get from existence that aren’t given but are protected by the government

  • The purpose of the government is to secure natural rights

• The government has to have the consent of the people to rule, and the consent comes from the vote of the people

• People can alter or abolish the government if the government doesn’t live up to what it was created for, but only after a long train of abuses to keep some stability

Articles of Confederation

• Official document of the United States of America from 1781-1787

• Created during the Revolution, with a fear of a strong national government

• Has one house of Congress, with one vote per state, and a super or complete majority is required to change the laws and the Articles

• No executive branch to enforce laws

• The federal government has no financial power so there was barely any revenue to pay off debts

• Makes America weak in trade, national defense, foreign and domestic security, and diplomacy

  • America is surrounded by the territories of powerful nations and vulnerable to invasions, especially because they haven’t paid back their war debts

• Summer 1787 - the government creates a committee to revise the Articles, which then ends up creating an entirely new document, the Constitution

Constitution of the United States of America

• State Constitutions - created by each state alongside a government after the revolution

• State governments are smaller versions of the national government

• Sovereignty - the ultimate source of power and authority, which was mostly a monarchy throughout the world, making America unique for getting its sovereignty from the states and their people

• The current government has the power to decide between giving more civil liberties or focusing more on national security

• An amendment passes by the approval of 2/3 of Congress and ¾ of the states, the Founding Fathers made it a slow process to place the Constitution as the ultimate law of all the state governments and federal governments

• There is no state-sponsored church and no religious oath can bind a government official to their office

• Founding Fathers believe a strong union is vital for national defense and security

  • Ancient Athens was seen as a cautionary tale since many of the Founding Fathers studied history, Greek city-states were too divided to protect themselves against Macedonia

• Legislative Branch - makes the laws, made up of assemblies of a House of Representatives and a senate

  • House of Representatives - representation based on state population, directly elected by the people for two-year terms and considered the most direct representation of the people

  • Senate - more prestigious, each state gets 2 senators who get 6-year terms, seen as less connected to the people

  • The Great Compromise - A mix of the Big State Plan and the New Jersey Plan

  Executive Branch - enforces the laws, made up of a president, vice president, and the presidential cabinet

  • The president is the Commander-in-Chief of the military to prevent the military from getting too powerful

• Judicial Branch - interprets the laws and holds power over lower courts

Slavery

• At the constitutional convention delegates say the trans-Atlantic slave trade could be banned in 20 years, 1808

  • it is banned in 1808

• When the New World started, the slave trade grew a lot under the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English rule

• Most slaves are sent to the Caribbean, but a sizeable portion are sent to the US

• Northern US - New England, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Delaware

  • 1777 - Vermont immediately outlaws slavery in the state constitution

  • 1780 - Massachusetts abolished slavery in court cases

    • Elizabeth Freeman sued the state based on “all men are created equal” from the Declaration of Independence

  • Gradual abolition - followed by New York, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, where a slave born after a certain date will become free once they are either 25 or 28 years old

  • It was the first time in the Western Hemisphere that slavery was abolished, and it’s because of America’s unique philosophy shown in the Declaration of Independence

• Southern US - Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, and Alabama

  • Slavery grows because of the economic reliance on cash crops

  • 1793 - the invention of the cotton gin, which made it much easier to produce cotton, and plantation owners became much more reliant on slavery for their growing profit

• Northwest Territory - the land above the Ohio River from the Treaty of Paris

  • Northwest Ordinance - the document governing the Northwest Territories

    • Gives the right to free public education to improve government function as the people are the ones voting for the representatives

    • Outlaws slavery and indentured servitude, and is used by abolitionists to say the majority of the Founding Fathers were against slavery

Newberg Incident

• After the final victory at Yorktown in 1781 and before the Paris Treaty in 1783, the US was struggling to find money to pay officers because they were in severe debt and the army had barely any money to pay the already underpaid officers and privates

• Some of these officers meet to stage a coup d’etat to be paid in Newberg, New York, but Washington is tipped off this coup d’etat is being planned and shows up from a side door

• To make a few remarks about American unity, he had to put on a pair of spectacles, which made many of the officers realize he was old and had already given so much just for the idea of America and they were preparing to throw that all away just for their wages

  • also shows Washington as a natural leader and someone people would follow because of how much he was devoted to freedom, liberty, and peace

Whiskey Rebellion

• America is in great debt from the war because of how much money they had to borrow, so Hamilton has the idea of placing a tariff on products like whiskey to get some money to pay off the debt

  • they didn’t raise general taxes like income tax because they didn’t have that yet

• the tariffs angered people because it was very much like the British national government taxing tea and they refused to pay the tariff

  • many wheat farmers were also upset because they often turned their wheat into whiskey because it was cheap and effective

• They start planning a rebellion, but once Washington hears of it, he brings an army of 13,000 men, and the uprising quickly disbands.

Farewell Address

• Washington steps down after two terms voluntarily

  • sets a precedent for voluntary stepping down instead of creating a monarchal sense where he rules for a long time

  • doesn’t want to die in office because back then, the presidential line of succession wasn’t that clear

  • allows for a transfer of power to take place

Election of 1800

• Burr and Jefferson both tie for the office of the president, so the House of Representatives is set to decide

• They have 35 rounds of voting, before Alexander Hamilton finally convinces a couple of Federalists to vote for Jefferson, his long-time enemy, and so Jefferson becomes the 3rd President of the United States and Burr begins to despise Hamilton

• Burr and Hamilton begin a feud that ends in a duel with Burr killing Hamilton in New Jersey

Jefferson’s Inaugural Address

• the first peaceful transfer of power in the United States

  • sets a new precedent because this rarely happened in the old world

• emphasizes the protecting of minority rights and free speech, which are important to the democratic-republicans