Ch 6

H. Free Black Communities

1. After the war, free black communities with their own churches, schools, and leaders came into existence. 2. In many states free black men had the right to vote. 3. Despite the rhetoric of freedom, the war did not end slavery for blacks. a. It increased from 500,000 in 1776 to 700,000 in 1790.

V. The Limits of Liberty A. Colonial Loyalists

1. An estimated 20 to 25 percent of Americans were Loyalists (those who retained their allegiance to the crown). 2. Loyalists included: a. Wealthy men with close working relationships with Britain b. Ethnic minorities fearful of losing to local majorities their freedom to enjoy cultural autonomy c. Many southern backcountry farmers and New York tenants who opposed wealthy planter patriots and landlord patriots, respectively.

G. Abolition in the North

1. Between 1777 and 1804, every state north of Maryland took steps toward emancipation. 2. Abolition in the North was a slow process and typically applied only to future children of current slave women.

C. The Cause of General Liberty

1. By defining freedom as a universal entitlement rather than as a set of rights specific to a particular place or people, the Revolution inevitably raised questions about the status of slavery in the new nation. 2. Samuel Sewall's The Selling of Joseph (1700) was the first antislavery tract in America. 3. Benjamin Rush warned (1773) that slavery was a "national crime" that would bring "national punishment."

D. The Debate over Free Trade

1. Congress urged states to adopt measures to fix wages and prices. 2. Adam Smith's argument that the "invisible hand" of the free market directed economic life more effectively and fairly than governmental intervention offered intellectual justification for those who believed that the economy should be left to regulate itself.

VI. Slavery and the Revolution A. The Language of Slavery and Freedom

1. During the debates over British rule, "slavery" was invoked as a political category. 2. The irony that America cried for liberty while enslaving Africans was recognized by some (e.g., the British statesman Edmund Burke and the British writer Dr. Samuel Johnson).

D. The New Constitutions

1. Each state wrote a new constitution, and all agreed that their governments must be republics. 2. States disagreed as to how the government should be structured: a. One-house legislatures were adopted only by Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont. b. John Adams's "balanced governments" included two-house legislatures.

F. Voluntary Emancipations

1. For a brief moment, the revolutionary upheaval appeared to threaten the continued existence of slavery, as some slaveholders, primarily in the Upper South, provided for the emancipation of their slaves. 2. In the Lower South, the emancipation process never started.

I. Introduction: Abigail Adams A. Wife of John Adams

1. Gave her political views in letters to him. a. Accepted the prevailing belief that a woman's primary responsibility was to her family b. Resented the "absolute power" husbands exercised over their wives.

C. The Indians' Revolution

1. Indians were divided in allegiance during the War of Independence. 2. Both the British and Americans were guilty of savagery toward the Indians during the war. 3. To many patriots, access to Indian land was one of the fruits of American victory. a. But liberty for whites meant loss of liberty for Indians. 4. The Treaty of Paris marked the culmination of a century in which the balance of power in eastern North America shifted away from the Indians and toward white Americans.

III. Toward Religious Toleration A. Catholic Americans

1. Joining forces with France and inviting Quebec to join in the struggle against Britain had weakened anti-Catholicism. 2. The full rights of Englishmen not only applied to Protestants.

E. A Virtuous Citizenry

1. Leaders wished to encourage virtue—the ability to sacrifice self-interest for the public good. 2. Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Rush, put forward plans for the establishment of free, state-supported public schools.

VII. Daughters of Liberty A. Revolutionary Women

1. Many women participated in the war in various capacities. a. Deborah Sampson, for example, dressed as a man and enlisted in the Continental army. b. Other women raised funds to assist American soldiers. 2. Within American households, women participated in the political discussions unleashed by independence. 3. "Coverture" (which meant that a husband held legal authority over his wife) remained intact in the new nation. 4. In both law and social reality, women lacked the opportunity for autonomy (based on ownership of property or control of one's own person) and hence lacked the essential qualification of political participation. 5. The republican citizen was defined as male.

C. The Politics of Inflation

1. Massive amounts of paper money, disruptions of agriculture and trade, and hoarding of goods produced inflation. 2. Some Americans responded to wartime inflation by accusing merchants of hoarding goods and by seizing stocks of food to be sold at the traditional "just price." a. From 1776 to 1779, more than thirty incidents occurred where crowds confronted merchants.

B. Separating Church and State

1. Men like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton viewed religious doctrines through the Enlightenment lens of rationalism and skepticism. 2. The drive to separate church and state brought together Deists with members of evangelical sects. 3. States disestablished established churches, depriving them of specific public funding and legal privileges. 4. The seven state constitutions that began with declarations of rights all included a commitment to "the free exercise of religion." 5. Most states still limited religious freedoms (e.g., barring Jews from voting and holding office, except in New York; or publicly financing religious institutions, such as in Massachusetts). 6. Catholics gained the right to worship without persecution throughout the states.

B. Obstacles to Abolition

1. Most founders owned slaves at one point in their respective lives. a. John Adams and Thomas Paine were exceptions. 2. Some patriots argued that slavery for blacks made freedom possible for whites.

D. Christian Republicanism

1. Religious and secular language merged in the struggle for independence, creating what scholars call Christian Republicanism. 2. Religious leaders interpreted the American Revolution as a divinely sanctioned event, part of God's plan to promote the development of a good society.

D. Petitions for Freedom

1. Slaves in the North and in the South appropriated the language of liberty for their own purposes. 2. Slaves presented "freedom petitions" in New England in the early 1770s. 3. Many blacks were surprised that white America did not realize their rhetoric of revolution demanded emancipation. 4. Lemuel Haynes and other black writers and leaders sought to make white Americans understand slavery as a concrete reality not a metaphor for lack of political representation. 5. The poems of Phillis Wheatley, a slave in Boston, often spoke of freedom.

E. British Emancipators

1. Tens of thousands of slaves deserted their owners and fled to British lines. 2. At the end of the war, over 15,000 blacks accompanied the British out of the country. a. Many ended up in Nova Scotia, England, and Sierra Leone, a West African settlement established by Britain for former U.S. slaves. b. Some were re-enslaved in the West Indies.

C. The Arduous Struggle for Liberty

1. The Revolution changed the life of virtually every American. 2. The winds of change were sweeping across the Atlantic world. a. Slave rebellion in Haiti in the 1790s b. Latin American wars for independence.

II. Democratizing Freedom A. The Dream of Equality

1. The Revolution unleashed public debates and political and social struggles that enlarged the scope of freedom and challenged inherited structures of power within America. a. The principle of hereditary aristocracy was rejected. 2. The Declaration of Independence's assertion that "all men are created equal" announced a radical principle whose full implications could not be anticipated. a. American freedom became linked with equality, which challenged the fundamental inequality inherent in the colonial social order.

B. The Loyalists' Plight

1. The War for Independence was in some respects a civil war among Americans. 2. War brought a deprivation of basic rights to many Americans. a. Many states required residents to take oaths of allegiance to the new nation. 3. When the war ended, as many as 60,000 Loyalists were banished from the United States or emigrated voluntarily.

B. Expanding the Political Nation

1. The democratization of freedom was dramatic for free men. 2. In the eighteenth century, democracy had multiple meanings. 3. Artisans, small farmers, laborers, and the militia all emerged as self-conscious elements in politics.

IV. Defining Economic Freedom A. Toward Free Labor

1. The lack of freedom inherent in apprenticeship and servitude increasingly came to be seen as incompatible with republican citizenship. 2. By 1800, indentured servitude had all but disappeared from the United States. 3. The distinction between freedom and slavery sharpened.

C. The Revolution in Pennsylvania

1. The prewar elite of Pennsylvania opposed independence. a. This left a vacuum of political leadership filled by artisan and lower-class communities. 2. Pennsylvania's 1776 constitution sought to institutionalize democracy in a number of ways, including: a. establishing an annually elected b. one-house legislature c. allowing tax-paying (not just property-owning) men to vote d. abolishing the office of governor.

E. The Right to Vote

1. The property qualification for suffrage was hotly debated. 2. The least democratization occurred in the southern states, where highly deferential political traditions enabled the landed gentry to retain their control of political affairs. 3. Most democratic new constitutions moved toward voting as an entitlement rather than a privilege. 4. By the 1780s, with the exceptions of Virginia, Maryland, and New York, a large majority of the adult white male population could meet voting requirements. a. Until 1807, property-owning women in New Jersey could vote. 5. Freedom and an individual's right to vote had become interchangeable.

C. Jefferson and Religious Liberty

1. Thomas Jefferson's "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" separated church and state in Virginia. 2. James Madison insisted that one reason for the complete separation of church and state was to reinforce the principle that the new nation offered "asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every nation and religion." 3. Thanks to religious freedom, the early republic witnessed an amazing proliferation of religious denominations. a. Today, more than 1,300 religions are practiced.

B. The Soul of a Republic

1. To most free Americans, equality meant equal opportunity rather than equality of condition. 2. Thomas Jefferson and others equated land and economic resources with freedom.

B. Republican Motherhood

1. Women played a key role in the new republic by training future citizens. 2. The idea of republican motherhood reinforced the trend toward the idea of "companionate" marriage. 3. The Revolution altered the structure of family life. a. In the North, hired workers were not considered part of the family as indentured servants and slaves had been.