01:512:205 Lecture 9: Chapter 9
18 May 2018
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Chapter 9: The Confederation and the Constitution,
1776-1790
1. Introduction
1. The American Revolution was not a revolution in the sense of a radical or
total change; what happened was accelerated evolution rather than
outright revolution
2. Some striking changes were ushered in, affecting social customs, political
institutions, and ideas about society, government, and even gender roles
in the Americas
3. The weakening of the aristocratic upper crust (exodus of Loyalists), with
all its culture and elegance, paved the way for new, Patriot elites to
emerge—more democratic ideas
2. The Pursuit of Equality
1. Most states reduced property-holding requirements for voting; most
Americans ridiculed the lordly pretensions of Continental Army officers
who formed an exclusive hereditary order, the Society of Cincinnati, and
citizens parted with primogeniture (eldest son)
2. A protracted fight for separation of church and state resulted in notable
gains
1. Although the Congregational Church continued to be legally
established in some New England states, the Anglican Church, tainted
by association with the British crown, was humbled; de-anglicized, it
reformed as the Protestant Episcopal Church
2. The struggled for divorce between religion and government was
hardest in Virginia; it was prolonged to 1786 when Thomas Jefferson,
his co-reformers and the Baptists, won a complete victory with the
passage of the Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom
3. The democratic sentiments unleashed by the war challenged the
institution of slavery
1. Philadelphia Quakers in 1775 founded the world’s first antislavery
society; the Continental Congress in 1774 called for the complete
abolition of the slave trade, a summons to which most of the states
responded positively
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2. Several northern states went further and either abolished slavery
outright or provided for the gradual emancipation of blacks; few
idealistic master freed their humans
3. This revolution of sentiments was sadly incomplete; no states south of
Pennsylvania abolished slavery, and in both North and south, the law
discriminated harshly against freed blacks and slaves alike;
emancipated African-Americans could be barred from purchasing
property, holding certain jobs, and educating their children
4.
5. Laws against interracial marriage also sprang up at this time
4. The sorry truth is that the fledgling idealism of the Founding Fathers was
sacrificed to political practicality; a fight over slavery would have fractured
the fragile national unity
5. Likewise incomplete was the extension of the doctrine of equality to
women
1. Some women did serve (disguised) in the military, and New Jersey’s
new constitution in 1776 even for a time, enabled women to vote but
most did traditional women work
2. Yet women did not go untouched by Revolutionary ideals; central to
republican ideology was the concept of civic virtue—the notion that
democracy depended on the unselfish commitment of each citizen to
the public good
3. The idea of republican motherhood thus took root, elevating women
to a newly prestigious role as the special keepers of the nation’s
conscience (educational opportunities for women expanded, in the
expectation that educated wives and mothers could better cultivate
the virtues demanded by the Republic in citizens
3. Constitution Making in the States
1. The Continental Congress in 1776 called upon the colonies to draft new
constitutions
1. The Continental Congress was actually asking the colonies to
summon themselves into being as new states; the sovereignty of
these new states, according to the theory of republicanism, would rest
on the authority of the people
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2. Massachusetts contributed one especially noteworthy innovation
when it called a special convention to draft its constitution and then
submitted the final draft directly to the people for ratification; once
adopted in 1780, the Massachusetts constitution could be changed
only by another specially called constitutional convention
2. The newly penned state constitutions had many features in common with
one another
1. Their similarity made easier the drafting of a workable federal charter
later in time
2. In British tradition, a constitution was not a written document but
rather an accumulation of laws, customs, and precedents; Americans
invented something else
3. The documents they drafted were contracts that defined the powers of
government, as did the old colonial charters, but they drew their
authority from the people
4. As written documents the state constitutions were intended to
represent a fundamental law, superior to the transient whims of
ordinary legislation (bills of rights)
5. All of them deliberately created weak executive and judicial branches;
there was a deep distrust of despotic governors and arbitrary judges
(His Majesty’s officials)
3. In all the new state governments, the legislatures, most democratic branch
of government, were given sweeping powers; the democratic character of
the new state legislatures was vividly reflected by the presence of
enfranchised members of the poorer western districts
4. Their influence was powerfully felt in their several successful movements
to relocated state capitals from the haughty eastern seaports into the less
pretentious interior
5. In the Revolutionary era, the capitals of New Hampshire, New York,
Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia were all moved
westward; these shifts portended political shifts that deeply discomfited
many more conservative Americans
4. Economic Crosscurrents
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Document Summary
Indies harbors hated british navigation laws: new commercial outlets compensate partially for the loss of old ones, americans could now trade freely with foreign nations, subject to local restrictions, enterprising yankee shippers ventured boldly and profitably into the. America by leaders preaching natural rights(cid:1689) and looking suspiciously at all persons clothed with authority: disruptive forces stalked the land; the departure of the conservative. Tory element left the political system inclined toward experimentation and innovation: hard times, the bane of all regimes, set in shortly after the war and hit bottom in 1786, british manufacturers, with dammed-up surpluses, began flooding the. Union on terms of complete equality: this amazing commitment faithfully reflected the anticolonial spirit of the. Revolution, and the pledge was later fully redeemed in the famed. Mississippi river, and south of the great lakes of the united states: the land ordinance of 1785 provided that the acreage of the old.
