Chapter 7 Annotated Outline

I. Creating Republican Institutions, 1776–1787

A. The State Constitutions: How Much Democracy?

1. In 1776, Congress urged Americans to suppress royal authority and establish new governing institutions by writing state constitutions.2. The Declaration of Independence stated that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

3. Pennsylvania’s constitution abolished property owning as a test of citizenship, allowed all male taxpayers to vote and hold office, and created a unicameral legislature with complete power.

4. In Massachusetts, John Adams devised a system of government that dispersed authority by assigning lawmaking, administering, and judging to separate branches.

5. Adams called for a bicameral legislature in which the upper house, filled with propertyowning men, would check the power of the popular majorities in the lower house.6. Patriots endorsed Adams’s system because it preserved representative government while restricting popular power.

7. The Adams bicameral legislature emerged as the dominant branch of government, and state constitutions apportioned seats on the basis of population.

8. Most of the state legislatures were filled by new sorts of political leaders; ordinary citizens increasingly chose to elect men of “middling circumstances” rather than electing their social “betters.”9. Upper-class women entered into the debate but remained second-class citizens unable to participate directly in politics.

10. The republican quest for educated citizenry provided the avenue for the most important advances made by American women.

B. The Articles of Confederation

1. The Articles of Confederation were passed by Congress in November 1777 and ratified in 1781.

2. The Articles provided for a loose confederation in which each state retained its independence as well as the powers and rights not “expressly delegated” to the United States.

3. The confederation government was given the authority to declare war and peace, make treaties, and adjudicate disputes between states, print money, and requisition funds from the states.

4. A major weakness under the Articles was that Congress lacked the authority to impose taxes.

5. Congress chartered the Bank of North America, hoping to use its notes to stabilize the inflated Continental currency.

6. Congress asserted the Confederation’s title to the trans-Appalachian West in order to sell it and raise additional revenue for the government.

7. The Northwest Territory was established, and three ordinances in the 1780s provided for its orderly settlement while reducing the prospect of secessionist movements and dependent “colonies” of the states.

C. Shays’s Rebellion

1. In the East, peace brought recession: the British Navigation Acts barred Americans from trading with the British West Indies and low-priced British goods flooded American markets.

2. Many states allowed debtors to pay in installments, while other states printed more paper currency in an effort to extend credit.3. The lack of debtor-relief legislation in Massachusetts provoked an armed uprising led by Captain Daniel Shays, known as Shays’s Rebellion.

4. To preserve its authority,Massachusetts passed a Riot Act outlawing illegal assemblies.

5. Shays’s army dwindled during the winter of 1786–87 and was dispersed by Governor James Bowdoin’s military force.

6. Many families who had suffered while supporting the war felt that they had traded onekind of tyranny for another; others feared the fate of the republican experiment.

II. The Constitution of 1787

A. The Rise of a Nationalist Faction

1. Money questions dominated the postwar agenda, and officials looked at them from a national rather than a state perspective.

2. Without tariff revenues, Congress could not pay the interest on foreign debt, but key commercial states in the North and most planters in the South opposed national tariffs.3. In 1786 the Virginia legislature met to discuss tariff and taxation policies and called for a convention in Philadelphia and a revision of the Articles of Confederation.

B. The Philadelphia Convention

1. In May 1787, delegates from every state except Rhode Island arrived in Philadelphia; most were “monied men” who supported creditors’ property rights and a central government.

2. George Washington was elected as presiding officer, and it was agreed that each state would have one vote and that the majority of states would decide an issue.

3. The delegates exceeded their mandate to revise the Articles of Confederation and considered James Madison’s Virginia Plan for national government.

4. Madison’s plan favored national authority, called for a national republic that drew its authority from all the people and had direct power over them, and created a three-tiered national government.

5. The plan had two flaws: citizens would oppose the national government’s vetoing of state laws, and small states would object because they would have less influence than larger states.

6. Delegates from the small states preferred the New Jersey Plan that strengthened the Confederation but preserved the states’ control over their laws.7. The Virginia Plan was passed by a bare majority, but the final plan had to be acceptable to existing political interests and social groups.

8. A “Great Compromise” was accepted wherein the Senate would seat two members from each state, while seats in the House would be appointed on the basis of population.

9. The convention vested the judicial powers of the United States “in one supreme Court” and left the national legislature to decide whether to establish lower courts.

10. The convention placed the selection of the president in an electoral college chosen on a state-by-state basis.

11. Congress was denied the power to regulate slavery for twenty years.

12. To protect the property of southern slave owners, delegates agreed to a “fugitive” clause that allowed masters to reclaim enslaved blacks—or white indentured servants—who took refuge in other states.

13. The Constitution was to be the supreme law of the land, and national government was given power over taxation, military defense, and external commerce and given the power to make laws.

14. The Constitution, signed on September 17, 1787, mandated that the United States honor the national debt and restricted the ability of states’ governments to assist debtors.

C. The People Debate Ratification

1. The Constitution would go into effect upon ratification by special conventions in at least nine of the thirteen states.

2. Nationalists began calling themselves “Federalists” and launched a political campaign supporting the proposed Constitution through pamphlets and newspaper articles.3. Antifederalists, opponents of the Constitution, feared losing their power at the state level and pointed out that it lacked a declaration of individual rights.

4. Well-educated Americans with traditional republican outlooks wanted the nation to remain a collection of small sovereign republics tied together only for trade and defense.

5. The Federalists pointed out that national authority would be divided among a president, a bicameral legislature, and a judiciary and that each branch would check and balance the other.

6. Addressing an Antifederalist argument, Federalists promised to amend the Constitution with a bill of individual rights.7. The narrow ratification of the Constitution brought an end to the Revolutionary era and the temporary ascendancy of the democratically inclined state legislatures.

D. The Federalists Implement the Constitution

1. Federalists swept the election of 1788; members of the electoral college chose George Washington as president, and John Adams became vice president.

2. The Constitution gave the president the power to appoint major officials with the consent of the Senate, but Washington insisted that only the president could remove them.

3. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created a hierarchical federal court system with thirteen district

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courts as well as three circuit courts to hear appeals.

4. The Judiciary Act permitted constitutional matters to be appealed to the Supreme Court, which had the final say.

5. The Federalists added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, which safeguarded certain fundamental rights and mandated certain legal procedures to protect the individual.

III. The Political Crisis of the 1790s

A. Hamilton’s Financial Program

1. The Federalists divided into two irreconcilable factions over financial policy, with Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson defining contrasting views of the American future.

2. Alexander Hamilton, secretary of the treasury, devised bold and controversial policies to enhance the authority of the national government and to favor financiers and seaport merchants.3. Hamilton’s Report on the Public Credit asked Congress to redeem millions of dollars in securities issued by the Confederation, providing windfall profits to speculators.

4. The House rejected James Madison’s proposal for helping the shopkeepers, farmers, and soldiers who were the original owners of the Confederation securities.5. Congress approved Hamilton’s second proposal that the national government assume the war debts of the states, unleashing a flurry of speculation and some government corruption.

6. Hamilton asked Congress to charter the Bank of the United States, to be jointly owned by private stockholders and the national government.

7. Washington signed the legislation creating the bank, although Jefferson and Madison charged that a national bank was unconstitutional because the Constitution did not specifically provide for one.

8. In 1792, Congress imposed a variety of domestic excise taxes and modestly increased tariffs on foreign imports.

9. Increased trade and customs revenue allowed the treasury to pay for Hamilton’s redemption and assumption programs.

B. Jefferson’s Agrarian Vision

1. By 1793, most northern Federalists adhered to the political alliance led by Hamilton and most southerners to a rival group headed by Madison and Jefferson, the Republicans.

2. Jefferson pictured a West settled by farm families whose grain and meat would feed Europeans in exchange for clothing and other comforts.3. During the 1790s, Jefferson’s vision was fulfilled as warfare disrupted European farming.

4. Simultaneously, a boom in the export of raw cotton boosted the economy of the lower South.

C. The French Revolution Divides Americans

1. American merchants profited from the European war because a Proclamation of Neutrality allowed American citizens to trade with both sides.

2. The American merchant fleet became one of the largest in the world, commercial earnings rose, and work was available to thousands of Americans.

3. Even as they prospered from the European struggle, Americans argued passionately over its ideologies and events.

4. The ideological conflicts sharpened the debate over Hamilton’s economic policies and brought on disruptions such as the Whiskey Rebellion, a protest against new excise taxes on spirits.

5. In 1793 the Royal Navy began to prey on American ships bound for France from the West Indies.

6. To avoid war, John Jay was sent to Britain and returned with a treaty that Republicans denounced as too conciliatory.

7. As long as the Federalists were in power, the United States would have a pro-British foreign policy.

D. The Rise of Political Parties

1. State and national constitutions made no provisions for political parties because they were considered unnecessary and dangerous.

2. Merchants and creditors favored Federalist policies, while the Republican coalition included support from farmers, artisans, Germans, and the Scots-Irish.

3. During the election of 1796, the Federalists celebrated Washington’s achievements, and Republicans invoked the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence.4. Federalists elected John Adams as president, and he continued Hamilton’s pro-British foreign policy.

5. Responding to the XYZ Affair, the Federalistcontrolled

Congress cut off trade with France and authorized American privateers to seize French ships.

E. Constitutional Crisis, 1798–1800

1. To silence its critics, the Adams administration enacted a series of coercive measures: the Naturalization Act, the Alien Act, and the Sedition Act.2. Republicans charged that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment’s prohibition against abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

3. The Kentucky legislature declared the Alien and Sedition Acts to be void.

4. Virginia passed a similar resolution and set forth a “states’ rights” interpretation of the Constitution.

5. Republicans strongly supported Jefferson’s bid for the 1800 presidency.

6. Adams rejected the advice of Federalists to declare war on France and instead negotiated an end to the fighting.

7. Jefferson won a narrow 73 to 65 victory in the electoral college, but Republicans also gave 73 votes to Aaron Burr, sending the election to the House of Representatives.

8. Federalists in the House blocked Jefferson’s election until Hamilton, declaring Burr “unfit” for the presidency, persuaded key Federalists to vote for Jefferson.

9. The bloodless transfer of power demonstrated that governments elected by the people could be changed in an orderly way, even amidst bitter partisan conflict and foreign crisis. It was therefore termed the “Revolution of 1800.”