The American Republic Textbook Answers

Learning Objectives

By the end of this department, you will be able to:

Place the major foreign and domestic uprisings of the early 1790s
Explain the effect of these uprisings on the political system of the United States

The colonies' brotherhood with French republic, secured afterwards the victory at Saratoga in 1777, proved crucial in their victory confronting the British, and during the 1780s French republic and the new United states enjoyed a special human relationship. Together they had defeated their common enemy, Neat Britain. But despite this shared experience, American opinions regarding France diverged sharply in the 1790s when France underwent its own revolution. Democratic-Republicans seized on the French revolutionaries' struggle against monarchy as the welcome harbinger of a larger republican movement effectually the world. To the Federalists, however, the French Revolution represented pure anarchy, particularly subsequently the execution of the French king in 1793. Forth with other strange and domestic uprisings, the French Revolution helped harden the political divide in the United States in the early 1790s.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The French Revolution, which began in 1789, further separate American thinkers into unlike ideological camps, deepening the political split betwixt Federalists and their Democratic-Republican foes. At start, in 1789 and 1790, the revolution in France appeared to near in the United States as function of a new chapter in the rejection of decadent monarchy, a trend inspired by the American Revolution. A ramble monarchy replaced the absolute monarchy of Louis Xvi in 1791, and in 1792, France was declared a republic. Republican liberty, the creed of the United States, seemed to be ushering in a new era in France. Indeed, the American Revolution served as an inspiration for French revolutionaries.

The events of 1793 and 1794 challenged the simple interpretation of the French Revolution as a happy affiliate in the unfolding triumph of republican regime over monarchy. The French king was executed in January 1793 (Effigy 8.5), and the adjacent two years became known as the Terror, a menses of extreme violence against perceived enemies of the revolutionary regime. Revolutionaries advocated direct representative democracy, dismantled Catholicism, replaced that organized religion with a new philosophy known as the Cult of the Supreme Being, renamed the months of the year, and relentlessly employed the guillotine against their enemies. Federalists viewed these excesses with growing alarm, fearing that the radicalism of the French Revolution might infect the minds of citizens at home. Democratic-Republicans interpreted the same events with greater optimism, seeing them as a necessary evil of eliminating the monarchy and aristocratic culture that supported the privileges of a hereditary form of rulers.

A drawing depicts the beheading of Louis XVI during the French Revolution. A large crowd surrounds a scaffold on which a guillotine is mounted. Louis XVI's headless body lies on the platform. An executioner holds his head up to the crowd.

Figure 8.five An paradigm from a 1791 Hungarian journal depicts the beheading of Louis 16 during the French Revolution. The violence of the revolutionary French horrified many in the United States—specially Federalists, who saw it equally an example of what could happen when the mob gained political command and instituted direct republic.

The controversy in the U.s. intensified when France declared war on Dandy Britain and Holland in February 1793. French republic requested that the United States make a large repayment of the money it had borrowed from France to fund the Revolutionary State of war. However, Uk would judge whatever aid given to France as a hostile act. Washington declared the U.s. neutral in 1793, but Democratic-Republican groups denounced neutrality and alleged their back up of the French republicans. The Federalists used the violence of the French revolutionaries as a reason to set on Autonomous-Republicanism in the United States, arguing that Jefferson and Madison would lead the country down a similarly disastrous path.

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Visit Freedom, Equality, Fraternity for images, texts, and songs relating to the French Revolution. This momentous event's impact extended far beyond Europe, influencing politics in the United States and elsewhere in the Atlantic World.

THE CITIZEN GENÊT AFFAIR AND JAY'S TREATY

In 1793, the revolutionary French government sent Edmond-Charles Genêt to the United States to negotiate an brotherhood with the U.S. authorities. France authorized Genêt to upshot letters of marque—documents authorizing ships and their crews to engage in piracy—to allow him to arm captured British ships in American ports with U.South. soldiers. Genêt arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, amid corking Democratic-Republican fanfare. He immediately began commissioning American privateer ships and organizing volunteer American militias to attack Spanish holdings in the Americas, then traveled to Philadelphia, gathering support for the French cause along the way. President Washington and Hamilton denounced Genêt, knowing his actions threatened to pull the United states into a war with Smashing Great britain. The Citizen Genêt affair, as it became known, spurred Great United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland to instruct its naval commanders in the West Indies to seize all ships trading with the French. The British captured hundreds of American ships and their cargoes, increasing the possibility of war betwixt the two countries.

In this tense state of affairs, United kingdom worked to prevent a wider conflict past ending its seizure of American ships and offered to pay for captured cargoes. Hamilton saw an opportunity and recommended to Washington that the United states negotiate. Supreme Court Justice John Jay was sent to U.k., instructed by Hamilton to secure compensation for captured American ships; ensure the British leave the Northwest outposts they however occupied despite the 1783 Treaty of Paris; and proceeds an agreement for American trade in the West Indies. Even though Jay personally disliked slavery, his mission besides required him to seek compensation from the British for self-emancipated enslaved people who left with the British at the end of the Revolutionary War.

The resulting 1794 agreement, known as Jay's Treaty, fulfilled most of his original goals. The British would turn over the borderland posts in the Northwest, American ships would be allowed to trade freely in the West Indies, and the United States agreed to assemble a committee charged with settling colonial debts U.S. citizens owed British merchants. The treaty did not accost the important effect of impressment, however—the British navy'due south practice of forcing or "impressing" American sailors to work and fight on British warships. Jay'due south Treaty led the Spanish, who worried that it signaled an alliance betwixt the U.s. and Smashing Great britain, to negotiate a treaty of their own—Pinckney's Treaty—that immune American commerce to flow through the Spanish port of New Orleans. Pinckney's Treaty immune American farmers, who were moving in greater numbers to the Ohio River Valley, to ship their products down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, where they could be transported to Due east Declension markets.

Jay's Treaty confirmed the fears of Democratic-Republicans, who saw information technology as a betrayal of republican France, cementing the idea that the Federalists favored elite and monarchy. Partisan American newspapers tried to sway public opinion, while the skillful writing of Hamilton, who published a number of essays on the field of study, explained the benefits of commerce with U.k..

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION'S CARIBBEAN LEGACY

Unlike the American Revolution, which ultimately strengthened the institution of slavery and the powers of American slaveholders, the French Revolution inspired slave rebellions in the Caribbean, including a 1791 insurgence in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti). Thousands of enslaved people joined together to overthrow the fell system of slavery. They took control of a large department of the island, called-for saccharide plantations and killing the White people who had forced them to labor under the lash.

In 1794, French revolutionaries abolished slavery in the French empire, and both Spain and England attacked Saint-Domingue, hoping to add the colony to their own empires. Toussaint Fifty'Ouverture, who had been born with slave status was subsequently freed, emerged equally the leader in the fight against Spain and England to secure a Haiti free of slavery and further European colonialism. Because revolutionary French republic had abolished slavery, Toussaint aligned himself with France, hoping to keep Kingdom of spain and England at bay (Figure 8.six).

Figure 8.half-dozen An 1802 portrait shows Toussaint Fifty'Ouverture, "Chef des Noirs Insurgés de Saint Domingue" ("Leader of the Blackness Insurgents of Saint Domingue"), mounted and armed in an elaborate uniform.

Events in Haiti farther complicated the partisan wrangling in the United States. White refugee planters from Haiti and other French Westward Indian islands, along with enslaved and free people of colour, left the Caribbean for the United States and for Louisiana, which at the time was held by Spain. The presence of these French migrants raised fears, peculiarly among Federalists, that they would bring the contagion of French radicalism to the United States. In addition, the thought that the French Revolution could inspire a successful slave uprising just off the American coastline filled southern White people and slaveholders with horror.

THE WHISKEY REBELLION

While the wars in France and the Caribbean divided American citizens, a major domestic test of the new national government came in 1794 over the issue of a tax on whiskey, an important part of Hamilton's financial programme. In 1791, Congress had authorized a tax of seven.5 cents per gallon of whiskey and rum. Although near citizens paid without incident, trouble erupted in four western Pennsylvania counties in an uprising known as the Whiskey Rebellion.

Farmers in the western counties of Pennsylvania produced whiskey from their grain for economic reasons. Without adequate roads or other means to ship a bulky grain harvest, these farmers distilled their grains into gin and whiskey, which were more cost-effective to transport. Since these farmers depended on the auction of whiskey, some citizens in western Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) viewed the new tax as further proof that the new national regime favored the commercial classes on the eastern seaboard at the expense of farmers in the W. On the other paw, supporters of the taxation argued that it helped stabilize the economic system and its price could hands be passed on to the consumer, not the farmer-distiller. However, in the spring and summer months of 1794, angry citizens rebelled confronting the federal officials in charge of enforcing the federal excise law. Similar the Sons of Freedom before the American Revolution, the whiskey rebels used violence and intimidation to protest policies they saw as unfair. They tarred and feathered federal officials, intercepted the federal mail, and intimidated wealthy citizens. The extent of their discontent found expression in their plan to course an independent western commonwealth, and they fifty-fifty began negotiations with British and Spanish representatives, hoping to secure their support for independence from the U.s.a.. The rebels also contacted their backcountry neighbors in Kentucky and South Carolina, circulating the thought of secession.

With their emphasis on personal freedoms, the whiskey rebels aligned themselves with the Democratic-Republican Party. They saw the tax as function of a larger Federalist plot to destroy their republican freedom and, in its most farthermost estimation, plow the Us into a monarchy. The federal government lowered the tax, but when federal officials tried to subpoena those distillers who remained intractable, trouble escalated. Washington responded by creating a thirteen-thousand-homo militia, fatigued from several states, to put downwardly the rebellion (Figure 8.7). This force fabricated information technology known, both domestically and to the European powers that looked on in apprehension of the new republic's collapse, that the national government would do everything in its power to ensure the survival of the U.s.a..

A painting shows George Washington, who is mounted on horseback, leading a large number of troops, both mounted and on foot, on a large plain with mountains in the background.

Effigy 8.7 This painting, attributed to Frederick Kemmelmeyer ca. 1795, depicts the massive force George Washington led to put down the Whiskey Rebellion of the previous twelvemonth. Federalists made articulate they would not tolerate mob activeness.

Defining American

Alexander Hamilton: "Shall the bulk govern or be governed?"

Alexander Hamilton frequently wrote persuasive essays under pseudonyms, like "Tully," as he does hither. In this 1794 essay, Hamilton denounces the whiskey rebels and majority dominion.

Information technology has been observed that the means nearly likely to exist employed to turn the insurrection in the western land to the detriment of the government, would be artfully calculated among other things 'to divert your attending from the true question to be decided.'
Let united states of america run into and then what is this question. Information technology is apparently this—shall the majority govern or exist governed? shall the nation rule, or exist ruled? shall the general volition prevail, or the volition of a faction? shall there be government, or no regime? . . .
The Constitution you have ordained for yourselves and your posterity contains this express clause, 'The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and Excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States.' Y'all have then, past a solemn and deliberate deed, the near important and sacred that a nation can perform, pronounced and decreed, that your Representatives in Congress shall take ability to lay Excises. You have done nothing since to contrary or impair that decree. . . .
But the four western counties of Pennsylvania, undertake to rejudge and reverse your decrees, you have said, 'The Congress shall have power to lay Excises.' They say, 'The Congress shall not have this power.' . . .
At that place is no route to despotism more certain or more to exist dreaded than that which begins at chaos."
—Alexander Hamilton's "Tully No. 2" for the American Daily Advertiser, Philadelphia, Baronial 26, 1794

What are the major arguments put forward by Hamilton in this document? Who do yous call up his audience is?

WASHINGTON'Southward NATIVE AMERICAN POLICY

Relationships with Native Americans were a significant problem for Washington'southward administration, but one on which White citizens agreed: Native Americans stood in the way of White settlement and, as the 1790 Naturalization Act fabricated clear, were not citizens. After the War of Independence, White settlers poured into lands west of the Appalachian Mountains. Equally a result, from 1785 to 1795, a country of war existed on the frontier between these settlers and the Native Americans who lived in the Ohio territory. In both 1790 and 1791, the Shawnee and Miami had dedicated their lands against the White settlers who arrived in greater and greater numbers from the East. In response, Washington appointed Full general Anthony Wayne to bring the Western Confederacy—a loose alliance of tribes—to heel. In 1794, at the Boxing of Fallen Timbers, Wayne was victorious. With the 1795 Treaty of Greenville (Effigy 8.8), the Western Confederacy gave up their claims to Ohio.

A painting depicts a small group of uniformed Americans negotiating with several Native Americans in native dress. The Native who speaks to the Americans bends slightly and gestures with his hands, with his compatriots standing behind him; the Americans, who stand straight-backed in a tight, impenetrable group, appear unmoved.

Effigy eight.8 Notice the contrasts between the depictions of federal and Native representatives in this painting of the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. What message or messages did the artist intend to convey?