APUSH Period 3 Chapter 7 "We the People" (How did the definition of citizenship in the new republic exclude Native Americans and African Americans?)

What idea did Henry Crevecoeur popularize in his book Letters from an American Farmer?

In Letters from an American Farmer, Crèvecoeur popularized the idea of the United States as a melting pot. "Here," he wrote, "individuals of all nations are melted into a new one." The American left behind "all his ancient prejudices and manners [and received] new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced."

What was ethnic nationalism?

defines the nation as a community of descent based on a shared ethnic heritage, language, and culture.

What is civic nationalism?

envisions the nation as a community open to all those devoted to its political institutions and social values

How does Jefferson reflect the divided minds of his generation on the topic of Africans?

- White Americans increasingly viewed blacks as permanently deficient in the qualities that made freedom possible. These were the characteristics that Jefferson, claimed blacks lacked, partly due to natural incapacity and partly because the bitter experience of slavery had rendered them disloyal to the nation. He therefore voiced the idea "as a suspicion only," that blacks "are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." Yet this "unfortunate" circumstance, he went on, "is a powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people." - His belief that individuals' abilities and achievements are shaped by social conditions inclined him to hope that no group was fixed permanently in a status of inferiority. He applied this principle, as has been noted, to Indians, whom he believed naturally the equal of whites in intelligence. In the case of blacks, however, he could not avoid the "suspicion" that nature had permanently deprived them of the qualities that made republican citizenship possible. - Black Americans, Jefferson affirmed, should eventually enjoy the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, but in Africa or the Caribbean, not in the United States. He foresaw Indians merging with whites into a single people, but he was horrified by the idea of miscegenation between blacks and whites. Unlike Indians, blacks, he believed, were unfit for economic independence and political self-government. Freeing the slaves without removing them from the country would endanger the nation's freedom.

As apprenticeship and indentured servitude narrowed in the USA, how was slavery justified for a nation committed to freedom?

the Revolution widened the divide between free Americans and those who remained in slavery. Race, one among many kinds of legal and social inequality in colonial America, now emerged as a convenient justification for the existence of slavery in a land that claimed to be committed to freedom.

With the notion that the West should not be left in Indian hands, what three possibilities did the government hope to encourage?

the removal of the Indian population to lands even farther west, their total disappearance, or their incorporation into white "civilization" with the expectation that they might one day become part of American society.

How were Indians viewed by Americans?

- deemed Indians savages unfit for citizenship. - Indian tribes had no representation in the new government, and the Constitution excluded Indians "not taxed" from being counted in determining each state's number of congressmen. The treaty system gave them a unique status within the American political system. - But despite this recognition of their sovereignty, treaties were essentially ways of transferring land from Indians to the federal government or the states

Which of nation identities did the Constitution subscribe to at the outset of the United States? Civic Nationalism or Ethnic Nationalism?

At first glance, the United States appears to conform to the civic model. It lacked a clear ethnic identity or long-established national boundaries—the political principles of the Revolution held Americans together. To be an American, all one had to do was commit oneself to an ideology of liberty, equality, and democracy. From the outset, however, American nationality combined both civic and ethnic definitions

What does his exclusion of Africans from his idea say about the status of blacks (free or slave)?

Crèvecoeur was well aware of what he called "the horrors of slavery." But when he posed the famous question, "What then is the American, this new man?" he answered, "a mixture of English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes. . . . He is either a European, or the descendant of a European." This at a time when fully one-fifth of the population (the highest proportion in U.S. history) consisted of Africans and their descendants.

Although President Washington and his Secretary of War Henry Knox wanted minimum warfare with the Native Americans, what happened in the Ohio Valley in 1791?

In 1791, Little Turtle, leader of the Miami Confederacy, inflicted a humiliating defeat on American forces. With 630 dead, this was the costliest loss ever suffered by the United States Army at the hands of Indians. In 1794, 3,000 American troops under Anthony Wayne defeated Little Turtle's forces at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

What three populations does the Constitution identify as inhabitants of the United States? Which groups got rights?

Indians, treated as members of independent tribes and not part of the American body politic; "other persons"—that is, slaves; and the "people. Only the 3rd were entitled to American freedom.

The status of free blacks was somewhat undetermined and left up to the states. Describe the boundaries of liberty for blacks in the North

The North's gradual emancipation acts assumed that former slaves would remain in the country, not be colonized abroad. During the era of the Revolution, free blacks enjoyed at least some of the legal rights accorded to whites, including, in most states, the right to vote.

The status of free blacks was somewhat undetermined and left up to the states. Describe the boundaries of liberty in the rest of the USA.

The large majority of blacks, of course, were slaves, and slavery rendered them all but invisible to those imagining the American community. Slaves, as Edmund Randolph, the nation's first attorney general, put it, were "not . . . constituent members of our society," and the language of liberty did not apply to them

Was the system of "annuity" established in the Treaty of Greenville beneficial to Native Americans or White Americans?

This led directly to the Treaty of Greenville of 1795, in which twelve Indian tribes ceded most of Ohio and Indiana to the federal government. The treaty also established the "annuity" system—yearly grants of federal money to Indian tribes that institutionalized continuing government influence in tribal affairs and gave outsiders considerable control over Indian life.

While Congress attempted to 'assimilate' Native Americans, what was the Natives version of freedom?

To pursue the goal of assimilation, Congress in the 1790s authorized President Washington to distribute agricultural tools and livestock to Indian men and spinning wheels and looms to Indian women. To whites, the adoption of American gender norms, with men working the land and women tending to their homes, would be a crucial sign that the Indians were becoming "civilized." To Indians, freedom meant retaining tribal autonomy and identity, including the ability to travel widely in search of game.

What groups were allowed to become citizens according to the Naturalization Act of 1790?

With no debate, Congress restricted the process of becoming a citizen from abroad to "free white persons." - only white persons in the entire world ineligible to claim American citizenship were those unwilling to renounce hereditary titles of nobility - "white" in the Naturalization Act excluded a large majority of the world's population from emigrating to the "asylum for mankind" and partaking in the blessings of American freedom.