1.

How did African societies change as a result of increased contact with

Europeans?
The main reason for the trade was economic not cultural: the need of American
settlers for
labour and the unwillingness of new settlers to work for hire rather than intake land
and
set up on their own, coupled with the ready availability of slaves in Africa. At that
time
slavery was normal, and not racially determined; there were in Africa large numbers
of
white slaves, for instance, who were sometimes rescued and set free by being
legally bought
by a Catholic group, the Redemptionist Fathers. In these circumstances, a normal
trade took
its normal course: willing buyers, willing sellers and no shortage of transport.
The cultural conditions were of course related to the economic ones. It is easy to
accept
something which is to one's advantage.
In addition, cultural conditions kept changing. At first the New World slaves were
natives;
it was part of the culture of the time that a defeated people had very limited or no
rights, and the Spanish had no qualms about forcibly setting the locals to work. For
several reasons this was not satisfactory in the long term especially in field work.
The
Mexicans and Caribbeans were refractory, they tended to die easily and they were
not
accustomed to hard and continuous outdoor labour. For this reason, Africans were
bought -
they were docile (chattel slavery was a cultural norm on the African continent, and
nothing
was happening to them which did not normally happen to people of their social
class), they
were cheap and they were used to field labour in their own country.
Later, New World slavery became more cosmopolitan. There were white slaves as
well:
transported convicts, indentured servants, those 'trepanned' (i.e. kidnapped or
deceived)
and sold into servitude, and the white or mixed-race offspring of all those classes.
The
culture in Europe at the time (the 18thC) was in this regard almost indistinguishable
from
that in Africa: it allowed shipment of the lower classes to forced labour abroad
without
causing moral unrest.
With the independence of the USA slavery began again to become racially
determined simply
because the supply of whites necessarily dried up. From that point the price of fit
and
healthy black men rose sharply (convicts had been cost-free: the planters did not
even have
to pay to acquire them and so only bought in the open market when they had to).
Accordingly, the incentive for American and European ship-owners to engage in the
trade
became greater. At one point you could buy a black man for £1 in Africa and sell
him for
£100 in the Americas. Transport was cheap, and the profits enormous.
It is from this point that racism in the USA became more acute and entrenched.
Before then,
most of the slaves had been black: after then, and increasingly, almost all of them
were.
This was a cultural as well as an economic shift. It became possible to regard those
with
dark skins as being different in kind from those with pale ones, and systematically
to
disregard their needs and feelings. The slaves, in the new economic conditions,
represented
an important capital investment and plantation management correspondingly
changed to a
harsher régime, designed to get money's worth out of the expensive labour force.
As so
often, economics and culture moved in step and it is hard to separate their effects

2. What enabled the Spanish to defeat the Aztecs?

The Spanish had superior weaponry to the Aztecs, and were aided by rival tribes
who
resented Aztec rule. The primary reason may have been the effect of the diseases
spread to
the Aztecs by the Spanish. Lacking any immunity to these diseases, many of the
Aztecs
became seriously ill or died.

3. How did the arrival of Europeans affect relations among Native

Americans in and around the Hudson River Valley?
The natives were at first curious about the new travelers. At first they overjoyed and
thought they were Gods.
Ultimately, Native Americans were enslaved, completely wiped out due to diseases
brought by
Europeans, or simply displaced due to the growing numbers of immigrants reaching
the
Americas.

4. Compare the founding and development of society in Virginia and

Massachusetts Bay.
Both Massachusetts bay colony and Virginia both suffered casualties.
Casualties in Massachusetts were less severe than Virginia (30% party loss for
Massachusetts but thousands more settlers on the way)
Massachusetts attracted hard working well-mannered men and women who
established the colony
on a firm basis.
5. Compare the development of Pennsylvania and New York with the
New England colonies
No, New York is considered part of the middle colonies, along with Pennslyvania,
Delaware,
and New Jersey. The New England colonies were New Hampshire, Rhode Island,
Massachusetts,
and Connecticut. (Later New England states include Vermont and Maine.).

6. How did Massachusetts evolve, both socially and economically during

the seventeenth century?
In the seventeenth century, different and sometimes disparate groups of English settlers established
several colonies in North America. The English way of colonization differed from that of the Spanish in
that English colonization did not emanate from a desire to create a centralized empire in the New
World.

Breaking Away
English migration to the New World was part of a larger pattern of mobility—the New World was just
another destination. Some Englishmen migrated to the New World for economic reasons, leaving
poverty and seeking land. Others came seeking religious opportunity or to avoid political strife and
conflict in England.

The Chesapeake: Dreams of Wealth

In the early to mid-seventeenth century, the English established two successful but diverse colonies
around the Chesapeake Bay—Virginia and Maryland.

Entrepreneurs in Virginia
In 1607, the London Company, a joint stock company, built Jamestown in Virginia. This colony,
however, experienced numerous problems arising from a hostile natural environment, conflict with
local Native Americans, the colonists’ failure to work for the common good, and unclear goals.

Spinning Out of Control

To save the colony, Captain John Smith took over the management of the town and imposed military
order. The London Company also restructured the government and sent more people to keep the
colony going.

“Stinking Weed”
One key to the eventual success of Virginia was the development by John Rolfe of tobacco as a
commercial crop. London Company directors further attracted settlers by giving land grants
(headrights), establishing elective local government (the House of Burgesses), and bringing women to
the colony. Under the management of Edwin Sandys especially, the colony thrived with new settlers
arriving regularly. Time of Reckoning
Disease and battles with the native population made Virginia a dangerous place, especially for
indentured servants. Despite increased immigration to Virginia, the mortality rate remained high in
Virginia. Such problems, combined with the continued low percentage of women colonists, made
establishing a family difficult.

Corruption and Reform

In 1624, King James I declared that Virginia was a royal colony to help solve some of the problems
plaguing the Virginia colony. James reformed the governance of the colony, appointing a royal
governor and council. Nonetheless, the House of Burgesses, which the Stuart monarchs opposed,
continued to meet, eventually forcing the monarchy to recognize them as a governing body. Despite
the changes in the colony’s management, the economic and social aspects of life there continued
much as before. Tobacco remained the primary crop, and life continued to revolve around the
plantation.

Maryland: A Troubled Refuge for Catholics

In the 1630s, Sir George Calvert and his son Cecilius, the Lords Baltimore, acquired a royal grant to
settle a colony north of Virginia, which was named Maryland in honor of the queen. The second Lord
Baltimore insisted on religious toleration of all Christian religions, including Catholicism, within the
colony, but this proprietary colony still faced much sectarian trouble during its early days.

Reforming England in America

Calvinist religious principles played an important role in the colonization of New England. A small
group of Separatists, or Pilgrims, first went to Holland and then settled the "Plymouth Plantation."
There these new settlers tried to replicate the villages and communities of England. Without assistance
from the local Native Americans, the Pilgrims would not have survived in the New World.

“The Great Migration”

The Puritans, a much larger and wealthier group of religious reformers, wanting to escape the tyranny
of King Charles I, established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Under the leadership of John Winthrop,
they sailed for the New World to create a better society by purifying English society and the Church
from within.

“A City on a Hill”
Throughout the 1630s, Massachusetts Bay enjoyed a steady stream of new migrants, many coming as
entire families, allowing the Puritans to build rigorous religious, economic, and political institutions.
Bound by a common purpose that revolved around the same religious goal, the Massachusetts Bay
colonies flourished. Adopting a Congregationalist system of church government, the Puritans’ religion
informed every aspect of their lives. But, the governments of New England were not theocracies, and
though many villages in the colony used democratic town meetings to solve local political problems,
neither were they democracies. Unlike in Virginia, in New England, the town was the center of public
life.

Limits of Religious Dissent

For the most part, the European settlers in New England managed to live in peace with one another,
primarily because they believed in the rule of law, producing the first code of law printed in English—
Lawes and Liberties. Despite this seemingly united belief system, disagreements did arise with regard
to religious beliefs. The Puritans did not practice religious toleration, and those individuals of the
colony that disagreed with the either the laws or the theology of the legal authorities were generally
tried as heretics and expelled from Massachusetts Bay. Two of these, Roger Williams and Anne
Hutchinson, upon leaving Massachusetts Bay established their own “Puritan” colonies elsewhere in
New England.

Breaking Away
Four colonies—New Hampshire, New Haven, Connecticut, and Rhode Island—were established as a
result of people leaving Massachusetts Bay. Some like Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson left for
religious reasons, while others were motivated to leave for economic reasons.

Diversity in the Middle Colonies

The key to the Middle Colonies—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware—was social and
cultural diversity, both within and among the several colonies.

Anglo-Dutch Rivalry on the Hudson

The Dutch colony of New Netherland had been settled not only by the Dutch but also by Finns,
Swedes, Germans, and Africans. Under Charles II, England easily wrested the ill-managed colony from
the Dutch and renamed it New York. The diversity and size of New York meant bureaucratic problems
for the Crown.

Confusion in New Jersey

Shortly after acquiring New York, the Duke of York awarded the land lying between the Hudson and
Delaware Rivers to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, individuals who had supported the crown
during the English Civil War. The transfer bred only confusion. In 1674, Berkeley sold his proprietary
rights to a group of Quakers, effectively splitting the colony in two. In 1702, the crown reunited New
Jersey into a single colony, but it never prospered the way that New York did, and struggled with
much internal political discord, as well as conflicts with the Crown and other colonies.

Quakers in America
Because they were persecuted in England, the Quakers, or Friends, came to the New World and
settled Pennsylvania.

Quaker Beliefs and Practice

Quakers turned away from Calvinism and its beliefs of original sin and eternal Predestination. In
Quaker theology, everyone possessed an “Inner Light” that offered salvation. There was no need for a
learned ministry because everyone’s interpretation of Scripture was valid. The Quakers practiced a
humble lifestyle eschewing social rank and position because all were equal in the eyes of the Lord. The
Quakers actively worked to convert others to their “Truth.”

Penn’s “Holy Experiment”

William Penn, an avid Quaker convert who was briefly involved with the New Jersey proprietorship,
was awarded the proprietorship of a vast area of land in the New World called Pennsylvania or “Penn’s
Woods.” There he tried to establish a complex society and government based on Quaker principles. Its
complexity caused lasting problems for the management of the colony.

Settling Pennsylvania
Penn and other Quakers promoted the colony aggressively throughout the colonies, England, and the
rest of Europe. The colony welcomed people of all faiths and nationalities, making Pennsylvania a
remarkably diverse colony. Although Pennsylvania was economically successful as a colony, its social
diversity often caused internal conflicts. Penn was forced by legal problems to leave Pennsylvania and
return to England in 1701. He died there in 1718 a poor and disillusioned man.

Planting the Carolinas

Though the area south of the Chesapeake known as the Carolinas shared many similarities with
Virginia and Maryland, it evolved quite differently. The fabled “solid South” of the nineteenth century
did not exist during the colonial period.

Proprietors of the Carolinas

The English settled the land south of Virginia as a result of the restoration of King Charles II. He
offered the area as a reward to a few of his followers. The “True and Absolute Lords Proprietors of
Carolina” had great trouble attracting settlers to their colony. Conditions in England had so improved
that the steady stream of willing migrants had run dry. Hoping to draw settlers from the other
colonies, the Lords Proprietors offered generous land grants only to find such settlers difficult to
attract.

The Barbadian Connection

The eventual success of the Carolinas was largely the result of the work of Anthony Ashley Cooper, the
Earl of Shaftesbury, and the migration of wealthy families from Barbados. Migrants from Barbados
came as families and individuals, some bringing with them large gangs of slaves, creating a slave-
based plantation society more similar to the islands than any mainland British colonies. The colony
experimented with several cash crops including beef, animal skins, and naval stores, finally
discovering the profitability of rice by the 1690s. Continually plagued by political disagreements
between the proprietors and the settlers and among the settlers themselves, the king in 1729 divided
the colony into North Carolina and South Carolina and made them both royal colonies.

The Founding of Georgia

The colony of Georgia resulted from the utopian vision of General James Oglethorpe. He settled the
land south of Charleston in order to give hope to the debtors imprisoned in London, and at the same
time, occupy land claimed by both England and Spain. Facing resistance from the settlers,
Oglethorpe’s utopian goals soon faded, and Georgia struggled economically and politically in its early
years.
Conclusion: Living with Diversity
The themes that connect the history of the early colonial development are hard work and, most
importantly, diversity.

7. Why did Chesapeake and Lower South colonists shift from

indentured servants to slaves as their labor force?
Slavery in the United States was a form of unfree labor which existed as a legal
institution in North America for more than a century before the founding of the
United
States in 1776, and continued mostly in the South until the passage of the
Thirteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.[1] The first English colony in
North
America, Virginia, acquired its first Africans in 1619, after a ship arrived, unsolicited,
carrying a cargo of about 20 Africans.[2][3] Thus, a practice established in the
Spanish
colonies as early as the 1560s was expanded into English North America.[4] Most
slaves were
black and were held by whites, although some Native Americans and free blacks
also held
slaves; there were a small number of white slaves as well.[5] Europeans also held
some
Native Americans as slaves, and African-Native Americans. Slavery spread to the
areas where
there was good-quality soil for large plantations of high-value cash crops, such as
tobacco, cotton, sugar, and coffee. By the early decades of the 19th century, the
majority
of slaveholders and slaves were in the southern United States, where most slaves
were
engaged in a work-gang system of agriculture on large plantations, especially
devoted to
cotton and sugar cane. Such large groups of slaves were thought to work more
efficiently if
directed by a managerial class called overseers, usually white men.
Before the widespread establishment of chattel slavery (outright ownership of a
human
being, and of his/her descendants), much labor was organized under a system of
bonded labor
known as indentured servitude. This typically lasted for several years for white and
black
alike. People paid with their labor for the costs of transport to the colonies. They
contracted for such arrangements because of poor economies in their home
countries.[6] By
the 18th century, colonial courts and legislatures had racialized slavery, essentially
creating a caste system in which slavery applied nearly exclusively to Black Africans
and
people of African descent, and occasionally to Native Americans. Spain abolished
slavery of
Native Americans in its territories in 1769.
From the 16th to the 19th centuries, an estimated 12 million Africans were shipped
as
slaves to the Americas. (see Slavery in the Americas)[7][8] Of these, an estimated
645,000
were brought to what is now the United States.[9]
By the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had
grown to
four million.[10]
Slavery was a contentious issue in the politics of the United States from the 1770s
through
the 1860s, becoming a topic of debate in the drafting of the Constitution; a subject
of
Federal legislation such as the ban on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Fugitive
Slave Act of 1850; and a subject of landmark Supreme Court cases, such as the
Dred Scott
decision. Slaves resisted the institution through rebellions and non-compliance, and
escaped it through travel to non-slave states and Canada, facilitated by the
Underground
Railroad. Advocates of abolitionism engaged in moral and political debates, and
encouraged
the creation of Free Soil states as Western expansion proceeded. Slavery was a
principal
issue leading to the American Civil War. After the Union prevailed in the war,
slavery was
made illegal throughout the United States with the adoption of the Thirteenth
Amendment to
the United States Constitution.[11] A few instances of enslavement of Indians by
other
Indians persisted in the following years. In the South, practices of slavery shaped
the
institutions of convict leasing and sharecropping. Illegal enslavement of captive
workers,
often immigrants, has occurred into the 21st century in nations across the world.

8. How did the Great Awakening shape American society?

We are more divided now than before the Great Awakening and more intolerate
towards other
religions, denominations, people of no-faiths, of different races, cultures, etc.

9. Why did the colonists react so strongly against British legislation

concerning the colonies following the French and Indian War?
The war caused England a great amount of money. They taxed colonies without
their opinion
about it.

10. Discuss the various resistance tactics used by the Americans against
the British from 1773 to 1775. Were they effective? Why or why not?
in 1773 the ‘Boston Tea Party’ saw British-monopolized tea thrown into the harbour
in a
gesture of contempt for the taxation system. As a result, Boston was closed to
shipping,
and generous trade concessions were given to the newly integrated French
Canadians in
Quebec.
In April 1775 the British C-in-C, Gen Thomas Gage, mounted a sortie to seize a
stockpile of
arms and powder at Concord, promptly became involved in a running fight, and, in
retreating
to Boston, suffered severe losses at Lexington. The affair quickly escalated and
colonial
militia began to entrench themselves enthusiastically around Boston Harbour,
overlooking
the British garrison. In June Gage's newly arrived replacement, Sir William Howe,
launched
a successful frontal assault against the American earthworks on Breed's Hill and
Bunker
Hill, which cost the British over 1, 000 casualties, 40 per cent of the attacking force,
and was a serious blow to their pride, morale, and capability for offensive
operations.
In June 1775, the Continental Congress appointed Washington, a wealthy Virginian
planter
with experience in the colonial militia, as its C-in-C. In autumn 1775, the British
found
themselves under pressure on all fronts. The Boston garrison was hemmed in, and
American
patriots had also seized the forts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga, threatening the
Canadian
urban centres of Montreal and Quebec. In the southern colonies Sir Henry Clinton
attempted
a coup de main in May at Charleston, but was bloodily repulsed, losing a ship and
many men
in an abortive artillery duel with shore batteries at Fort Moultrie. Meanwhile, Howe
had
brought 9, 000 reinforcements from England to Boston, but his supply ships failed to
arrive.

11. Describe the differing views among colonial leaders as to how to

protest their grievances to Britain leading up to the Declaration of
Independence.
Perhaps no document in history has undergone as much scrutiny as the Declaration
of
Independence. In this formal statement announcing the severed ties between the
thirteen
colonies and Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson wrote essentially of a new theory of
government, in which the government itself was expected and required to protect
“natural rights” of citizens.
Since Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration, many groups have interpreted
the
document to mean different ideas, and frequently, the Declaration has been used to
justify
other political and social movements. While the Declaration is an important historic
document and incorporates many of America’s most basic beliefs, it has no effect of
law
in 21st Century America. In this lesson, students will question the importance of the
Declaration of Independence, its meaning during the time of the Revolution and its
impact today.
John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and
medical
researcher, whose association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of
Shaftesbury) led him to become successively a government official charged with
collecting
information about trade and colonies, economic writer, opposition political activist,
and
finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution
of
1688. Much of Locke's work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. This
opposition is both on the level of the individual person and on the level of
institutions
such as government and church. For the individual, Locke wants each of us to use
reason to
search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject
to
superstition. He wants us to proportion assent to propositions to the evidence for
them. On
the level of institutions it becomes important to distinguish the legitimate from the
illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for
the
uses of force by these institutions. The positive side of Locke's anti-authoritarianism
is
that he believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth, and determining the
legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual
and
society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare. This in turn, amounts to
following natural law and the fulfillment of the divine purpose for humanity. Locke's
monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding concerns itself with
determining the
limits of human understanding in respect to God, the self, natural kinds and
artifacts, as
well as a variety of different kinds of ideas. It thus tells us in some detail what one
can
legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Locke also wrote a variety of
important
political, religious and educational works including the Two Treatises of
Government, the
Letters Concerning Toleration, The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some
Thoughts
Concerning Education.
12. What was the political philosophy of "republicanism"?
In political theory and philosophy, the term ‘republicanism’ is generally used in two
different, but closely related, senses. In the first sense, republicanism refers to a
loose
tradition or family of writers in the history of western political thought, including
especially: Machiavelli and his fifteenth-century Italian predecessors; the English
republicans Milton, Harrington, Sidney, and others; Montesquieu and Blackstone;
the
eighteenth-century English commonwealthmen; and many Americans of the
founding era such as
Jefferson and Madison. The writers in this tradition emphasize many common ideas
and
concerns, such as the importance of civic virtue and political participation, the
dangers
of corruption, the benefits of a mixed constitution and the rule of law, etc.; and it is
characteristic of their rhetorical style to draw heavily on classical examples—from
Cicero
and the Latin historians especially—in presenting their arguments. (In light of the
last
point, this is sometimes referred to as the ‘classical republican’ or ‘neo-roman’
tradition
in political thought.)
Beyond this brief sketch of the classical republican tradition, there exists
considerable
historiographical controversy—with respect to who the tradition's members are, and
their
relative significance; with respect to how we should interpret its underlying
philosophical
commitments; and with respect to its role (especially vis-à-vis liberalism) in the
historical development of modern political thought. This brings us to the second
sense of
the term ‘republicanism’. In contemporary political theory and philosophy, it most
often
refers to a specific (and still contested) interpretation of the classical republican
tradition, associated especially with the work of Quentin Skinner; together with a
research
program dedicated to developing insights from this tradition into an attractive
contemporary political doctrine, associated especially with the work of Philip Pettit.
According to republicans in this second sense (sometimes called ‘civic republicans’
or
‘neo-republicans’), the paramount republican value is political liberty, understood as
non-domination or independence from arbitrary power. This entry will primarily
discuss
republicanism in this second sense.
In their interpretation of the classical republicanism tradition, civic republicans are
often in debate with civic humanists, with whom they are often confused (see the
entry on
civic humanism). Developed as a contemporary political doctrine, civic
republicanism is
broadly speaking progressive and liberal, but not without important distinct
features. Some
of its policy implications diverge from mainstream liberalism in particular ways, and
for
this reason civic republicans are sometimes also confused with communitarians
(see the
entry on communitarianism). For the strengths or weakness of civic republicanism
to be
fairly assessed, both confusions should be assiduously avoided.

13. What role did religion play in America in the early nineteenth
century?
For untold generations before Europeans came to America, native peoples
celebrated the
bounty given to them by the Great Spirit. Across America, such Native American
tribes as
the Algonquians, the Iroquois, Sioux, and the Seminoles worshiped the Great Spirit,
who
could be found in animals as well as inanimate objects. Elaborate rituals and such
dances
as the Sundance, Round, Snake, Crow, Ghost and others were developed and led by
such native

leaders as Wodiziwob, Wovoka, Black Elk, Big Foot, Sitting Bull, and others. As white
colonists drove Indians onto reservations, the fervency of their religious practices
increased, even as Christian missionaries made inroads that influenced their
spirituality.

14. Compare Thomas Jefferson's views on African Americans with his

views on Native Americans
Thomas Jefferson, our icon of freedom and personal liberty set the national policy
toward
Native Americans that would last for over one hundred years. He began the trail of
tears
which would destroy cultures and result in the reservation system.
Always a man of dichotomies, Jefferson admired and lauded the American Indian. As
a man of
the Romantic Era he saw them as unspoiled; the "noble savage". As, also, a man of
the
Enlightenment, with its analytical detachment, he knew that the Indian way of life
could no
longer exist in an expanding United States.
Jefferson's attitude toward the Indian population of the United States always
seemed as
profoundly paradoxical as his attitude toward slavery... On several occasions he
went out
of his way to describe the Indian people of North America as a noble race who were
the
innocent victims of history....One senses in so many of Jefferson's observations on
Indians
an authentic admiration mingled with a truly poignant sense of tragedy about their
fate as
a people...On the other hand, it was during Jefferson's presidency that the basic
decisions
were made that required the deportation of massive segments of the Indian
population to
land west of the Mississippi..."the seeds of extinction" for Native American culture
were
sown under Jefferson. (Ellis, 1997).
Jefferson had known and been interested in Native Americans all of his life. He had
been
associated with them during his boyhood in Albemarle County and his college days
in
Williamsburg. He had heard his father's tales of journeys into the wilderness and his
interactions with the Indians, but no Native Americans roamed the forest near
Jefferson's
boyhood home. The only Indians he saw, as a boy, were "civilized". They were
romantic
characters to the young lad when they stopped at the Jefferson home on their way
to
Williamsburg.
Peter Jefferson's house was a popular way station for the friendly Cherokees whose
embassies were bound for Williamsburg. Jefferson long after reflected on his early
attachment to Indians, writing John Adams of his presence in the warrior-orator
Outasette's
camp on the eve of that Indian's journey to England: "The moon was in full
splendor...His
sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his
people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, altho' I did not
understand a word he uttered," Jefferson was impressed by the Indian's use of
words to make
a noble display of his humanity, to move others. (Burnstein, 1997).
Jefferson further expounded on the Indians' ability to speak in his Notes on the State
of
Virginia:
I may challenge the whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, and of many more
prominent
orators, if Europe has furnished any more eminent, to produce a single passage,
superior to
the speech of Logan, a Mingo chief, to Lord Dunmore when Governor of this State.
(As cited
in Chinard, 1964).
Referencing and comparing Native Americans to classical cultures was a theme
which runs
throughout Jefferson's musings on Indians. "Aboriginal Homeric concepts of human
behavior
had early become real and concrete to him in the simple dignity of American
Indians."
(Lehmann, 1994).
Perhaps this comparison with Europe's heroic era was to buttress his defense of all
things
American. For, it was then contended, by France's Count Buffon, that all flora,
fauna, and
men of the New World were degenerate. Jefferson contested Buffon's statement
about the
notion that the Native American "savage" was "feeble," "timid and cowardly," with
"no
vivacity, no activity of mind." On the contrary, stated Jefferson, the Indian "meets
death
with more deliberation" than any other race on earth; "his friendships are strong
and
faithful to the uttermost extremity." (Burnstein, 1997).
"As for happiness, he thought it probably greater among the American Indians than
among the
great body of people in Europe."(Malone, 1951).
Dumas Malone, Jefferson biographer, feels that the statements relating to Indians in
the
Notes on Virginia can be matched in passion only by those extolling freedom.
Jefferson
stoutly defended them against charges of deficiency in sexual ardor and lack of
familial
affection, and praised them for their courage and sense of honor.
In Notes, perhaps Jefferson's greatest scientific work, he listed the tribes with a
fullness and precision which were uncommon of his era. He discussed the Native
Americans
with an objectivity which was also rare for his time. Nevertheless, many biographers
feel
that sentimentalism blurred his scientific view. He had always been interested in
Indian
folklore and the origins of Native Americans. In his personality there was a natural
archaeologist. In the course of excavating an Indian mound on his property he
invented the
method of "stratigraphical" observation, which is the basic principle of modern
archeological investigation.
His lifetime interest in Native Americans can also be seen in his long term effort to
collect and catalogue Indian vocabularies. He worked on this extensively during his
Presidency, perhaps as way of relieving the stress of office. But, the office, also,
gave
him new resources. On July 4, 1801, his first year as president, Jefferson held a
reception
for five Cherokee chiefs where he queried them for his vocabularies study. When he
sent
Lewis and Clark on their expedition of the Louisiana Territory he tasked them to
collect
linguistic records of all the tribes they encountered.
This great ethnological treasure, alas, was never finished. At the end of Jefferson's
second term they were lost to a pair of ferrymen who thought that the President's
baggage
contained treasure.
Coming home from Washington: Among these effects was a trunk containing the
Indian
vocabularies, some fifty in number, that he had collected through thirty years. On
the last
leg of the journey, while ascending the James River above Richmond, this trunk was
stolen.
Towards the end of May a reward for its recovery was offered by his agents in
Richmond. It
was reported in June that the papers from the trunk had been discovered in the
James below
Lynchburg. Only a few defaced leaves of the vocabularies were saved. In some of
his
comments on this irreparable loss Jefferson seemed vindictive. Later in the summer
after
the culprit was caught and on trial he stated with apparent satisfaction that the
thief
would doubtless be hanged. (Malone, 1981).
Jefferson's use of political office to further his romantic study of languages is
tempered
by the rational politician. "As governor and President, he was to receive visits from
Indians...He was to observe this race as a philosopher and to inquire into its
languages;
as a responsible statesman he was to grapple with the problem of depredations and
massacres
on the frontier." (Malone, 1948).
This balancing act caused, almost, a detachment by him concerning his actions
toward Native
Americans. On one hand, he had ordered Lewis and Clark to offer friendship, trade,
education, and even to offer vaccination for smallpox to the Indians. (American
Heritage,
1972).
On the other hand, as soon as Louisiana was purchased, during his first term, he
embarks on
a cold-blooded policy toward Native Americans. Jefferson, in a lengthy letter to
William
Henry Harrison, military governor of the Northwest Territory, explained the nation's
policy
"is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate their affectionate
attachment
from them, by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the
bounds of
reason." Having said that, Jefferson then instructs Harrison on how to get rid of
every
last independent tribe between the Atlantic states and the Mississippi.
(Montgomery, 2000).
In secret messages to his cabinet and Congress, Jefferson outlined a plan for
removal of
all Native Americans east of the Mississippi to make sure that this land would never
fall
to the French or the British. Jefferson was even less sentimental and more direct
during
his second inaugural address in 1805. Even the area west of the Mississippi would
no longer
be available to the Indian.
This was certainly a very regrettable situation, but the idea of questioning the right
of
an overflowing population to occupy scarcely populated territories did not for a
moment
enter Jefferson's mind. To deny such a right would have been not only detrimental
to the
very existence of the United States, but also a denial of the "right" of "our Saxon
ancestors" to settle in England. Furthermore, the President was confronted with a
certain
set of facts and not with theory. The territory of which the Indians had so long
enjoyed
undisturbed possession was growing narrower every day. With the recent
acquisition of
Louisiana, it was to be foreseen that they would not be able to roam freely much
longer in
the vast territories extending west of the Mississippi. (Chinard, 1964).
Thus, the Native Americans must change, become Europeanized, or become extinct.
Even out of
office Jefferson held this view. In his plan for the University of Virginia, he devised a
scheme to "civilize" the Native American.
The plan of civilizing the Indians is undoubtedly a great improvement on the ancient
and
totally ineffectual one of beginning with religious missionaries. Our experience has
shown
that this must be the last step of the process. The following is what has been
successful:
1st, to raise cattle, etc., and thereby acquire a knowledge of the value of property;
2d,
arithmetic, to calculate that value; 3d, writing, to keep accounts, and here they
begin to
enclose farms, and the men labor, the women spin and weave; 4th, to read Aseop's
Fables and
Robinson Crusoe are their first delight. The Creeks and the Cherokees are advanced
thus
far, and the Cherokees are now instituting a regular government. (As cited in Mayo,
1972).
Even though Jefferson's plan never came to fruition, it did set the tone for relations
with
Native Americans. This, along with his governmental policies, laid the basis for the
end of
most Native cultures.
15. In what ways did Jefferson believe that agrarianism would promote
democracy?
Jeffersonian Democracy has never been described more economically or elegantly
than in
Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address in 1801. For twelve years after George
Washington's
inauguration, the infant federal government had been directed by a Hamiltonian
design for
national greatness. The election of 1800, Jefferson informed one correspondent, was
"as
real a revolution in the principles of our government as that of 1776 was in its
form"; it
rescued the United States from policies that had endangered its experiment in
popular
self-governance and had undermined the constitutional and social groundwork of a
sound
republican regime, from leaders whose commitment to democracy itself had
seemed un-certain.
The Jeffersonian Republicans would set the Revolution back on its republican and
popular
foundations. They would certainly, as most historians would see it, loose a spirit of
equality and a commitment to limited government that would characterize the
nation for a
century or more to come.
As Washington's secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton had faced toward
the Atlantic

and supported rapid economic growth, envisioning the quick emergence of an

integrated state
in which the rise of native manufactures would provide materials for export and a
large
domestic market for the farmers. Supported by a broad interpretation of the
Constitution,
his economic and financial policies were intended to equip the young nation with
institutional foundations comparable to those that had permitted tiny Britain to
compete
effectively with larger nation-states, and he carefully avoided confrontation with
that
power. The Republicans, by contrast, were more concerned about the preservation
of the
relatively democratic distribution of the nation's wealth. While they had always
advocated
freeing oceanic commerce and providing foreign markets for the farmers, they
believed that
Federalists had rendered the United States subservient to Britain and had actually
preferred a gradual reintroduction of hereditary rule.
Jeffersonian ambitions for the nation focused much more on the West, where a
republic
resting on the sturdy stock of independent farmer-owners could be constantly
revitalized as
it expanded over space. Under Jefferson's (and then James Madison's) direction, the
central
government would conscientiously withdraw within the boundaries that they
believed had been
established when the Constitution was adopted, assuming that the states, "in all
their
rights," were "the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and
the surest
bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies." The national debt would be retired as
rapidly
as preexisting contracts would permit, not clung to for its broader economic uses
while the
interest payments steadily enriched a nonproductive few and forged a dangerous,
corrupting
link between the federal executive and wealthy moneyed interests. State militias,
not
professional armed forces, would protect the nation during peacetime. Internal
taxes,
during peacetime, would be left to the states. The federal government would
cultivate
"peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with
none."
Committed to "equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion,
religious or political," to religious freedom, freedom of the press, and other
constitutional protections (many of which, as Jefferson conceived it, had been
gravely
threatened during the final years of Federalist rule), the Jeffersonians would
conscientiously pursue "a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men
from injuring
one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and
improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."
The
Jeffersonian Republicans, as Jefferson or Madison conceived it, were quintessentially
the
party of the people and the champions of the republican Revolution. Their principles
democratized the nation, profoundly shaping its religious landscape as well as its
political institutions and ideas. They may also have protected slavery, produced a
war with
Britain, and contributed essentially to both sides of the argument that led to civil
war.

16. How did Andrew Jackson change the role of the presidency
Everyone admired Jackson as a patriot, a self-made man, and a war hero. His
parents, poor
farmers, died before he was 15. He also fought with the Patriots in the American
Revolution. Before he was 30, he was elected to Congress from Tennessee. When
he became
president, a spirit of equality spread through American politics. ALso, some states
had
loosened or soon would loosen the property of requirements for voting. And lastly,
democracy expanded as people who had not been allowed to vote voted for the first
time. In
1824-1828, the percentage of white males voting in presidential elections increased
from
26.9% to 57.6%.

17. What was the impact of industrialization on women?

In 1855, women's struggle for equality was and is a long and hard battle. Though
suffrage
was gained in 1920, the struggle for equality continues into the present time. The
women
who embarked on this crusade in the mid-1800s were courageous, defying most
respectable
standards of their time to stand up for what they believed.
 In the nineteenth century, most Americans assumed that there was a natural
order in
society which placed men and women in totally different spheres. The ideal woman
was
submissive; her job was to be a meek, obedient, loving wife who was totally
subservient to
the men around her.
Between 1750 and 1850, women's roles in America changed somewhat. In an
agrarian
society, it was necessary for both husband and wife to put in a full day's labor, for
the
success of the farm depended on them both.
Industrialization produced further changes. As factories began to do many of the
things
women had done at home previously, such as spinning and weaving, women were
left with a
little more time to devote to other projects. Clergymen began to recruit them for
various
reforms but always they, the women, would work in their proper sphere, influencing
only the
men In their family.
By the early 1800s women were ready to branch out from their families and make
an
impression on the world. Numerous women's organizations were formed, some
social, but many
bound on doing social work. One example: Female associations ran charity schools
and for
refugees for women in need.

18. How did the Second Great Awakening transform American religious
culture?
The second great awakening made people greatly sway to more religion

19. How did slaves resist the demands of slaveholders?

If you mean how did slavery stop, abolitionists were the main cause, they fought for
slaves
and tried to get an act going throughout America that would make slavery illegal.
Some
parts of America made slavery illegal whilst some parts encouraged it. Some
abolitionists
helped slaves escape and lead them to Canada where Slavery was illegal.

20. Describe the political philosophy of the Republican Party

I believe the strength of our nation lies with the individual and that each person's
dignity, freedom, ability, and responsibility must be honored. •I believe in equal
rights,
equal justice, and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, sex, age, or
disability.
I believe free enterprise and encouraging individual initiative have brought this
nation
opportunity, economic growth, and prosperity.
I believe government must practice fiscal responsibility and allow individuals to
keep
more of the money they earn.
I believe the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those
critical
functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations and that
the
best government is that which governs least.
I believe the most effective, responsible, and responsive government is government
that is
closest to the people.
I believe Americans must retain the principles that have made us strong while
developing
new and innovative ideas to meet the challenges of changing times.
I believe Americans value and should preserve our national strength and pride while
working to extend peace, freedom, and human rights throughout the world.
Finally, I believe the Republican Party is the best vehicle for translating these ideals
into positive and successful principles of government.
incoln's Ten Guidelines . . .
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income
You cannot further brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred
You cannot establish security on borrowed money
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and
independence
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do
themselves
21. What role did women play in the Civil War?
Mainly nurses but also housing troops, spies, laundresses, vivandieres, sanitary and
christian commission workers, newspaper writers, and undercover soldiers. One ex-
slave
spied of Jefferson Davis by working for him as a maid! And dont forget, women
played a big
role in the Civil war, if there weren't women nurses, A LOT of more men would have
died

22. To what extent is it valid to claim that Reconstruction was a failure?

To what extent was it a success?
Failure becuase it basically crippled the south, helped out the north a bit though

23. How did the newly freed people try to take control of their fate
during Reconstruction?
As the Civil War ended in 1865, Congress created the Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen, and
Abandoned Land, popularly known as the Freedmen's Bureau, to help former slaves
make the
transition to freedom. Throughout the South, the Freedmen's Bureau established
schools and
hospitals, helped negotiate labor contracts, leased or sold confiscated lands to the
freedmen, and generally tried to protect them from former masters.
The unpopularity of the Freedmen's Bureau among white Southerners caused
President Andrew
Johnson to veto an 1866 bill to extend the life of the bureau. The veto outraged both
moderate and radical Republicans in Congress and united them against the
President.
Congress passed the second Freedmen's Bureau Act over the President's veto and
started down
the collision course that would result in Johnson's impeachment in 1868.
24. Describe the economic fate of newly freed people during and
immediately following Reconstruction.
From 1789 to 1865 the Supreme Court's most compelling concerns had been to
establish its
own constitutional authority, to establish the scope of the powers of the national
government, and to define the relations between the national and the state
governments. By
the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Court's authority as expositor of the
Constitution
was well accepted. Moreover, the war itself established the national character of the
central government and the apparent breadth of its powers. The proslavery record
of the
Court, however, especially its disastrous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857),
had
weakened its authority (see Slavery). It seemed quite possible that the now‐
dominant
Republican party would challenge the Court's claim to review national legislation. At
the
same time, the Civil War and Reconstruction precipitated a potentially revolutionary
change
in the federal system. Finally, tremendous economic and social changes, associated
with the
rise of modern American industrialism, took place in the decades following the Civil
War.
These raised constitutional issues about property rights and government regulation
that
would come to dominate the Supreme Court's agenda.
Reconstruction
After the Civil War, Americans faced the difficult problem of how to reconstruct both
the
Union and the individual southern states. Despite significant opposition on the part
of
northern Democrats aided by President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham
Lincoln, the
Republican party was able to maintain control of the national government.
Republicans were
deeply committed to protecting the basic rights of the newly freed slaves and of
white
southern unionists. Closely related was a determination that unreconstructed
Confederates
not be permitted to resume control of the southern states. But these commitments
had to be
reconciled with the general desire for a speedy restoration of the Union, for
generosity to
rebels who demonstrated renewed loyalty, and for the maintenance of a balanced
federal
system.
Republicans determined to establish a program to secure these goals before they
restored
southern states to normal relations in the Union. Ultimately, Congress passed a
Reconstruction Act (1867) that declared the Johnson‐authorized governments
provisional and
placed them under military authority until Congress recognized new governments to
be
established by constitutional conventions and subsequent elections.
These decisions raised the profound constitutional question of the status of the
southern
states and people upon the close of the war. White Southerners, northern
Democrats, and
President Johnson were convinced that Republicans were abrogating the rights of
the
southern states and unconstitutionally subjecting the southern people to military
government. As northern Democrats and Johnson lost the political struggle to the
Republicans, white southerners appealed to the Supreme Court.
They had some hope of success, because in Ex parte Milligan (1866) five of the
justices
opined that Congress could suspend the privilege of habeas corpus and authorize
military
trials—a key element of military supervision of the South—only when ordinary
courts were
closed by invasion or insurrection. Moreover, in Cummings v. Missouri (1867) and Ex
parte
Garland (1867) the justices by 5‐to‐4 margins had signaled their distaste for the
Republican program by ruling that test oaths could not be used to bar former rebels
from
practicing their professions. The “test oath” laws made the ability to take an oath of
past
loyalty a test for admission to the bar, clergy, or other influential professions.
These decisions led to charges that the Court was continuing its old proslavery
ways.
Leading Republicans in Congress proposed to strip the Court of the power to review
national
laws or to require two‐thirds majorities to rule federal laws unconstitutional. But in
Mississippi v. Johnson (1867) and Georgia v. Stanton (1868), the Court refused
requests
from the Johnson‐organized state governments for injunctions restraining the
president and
his secretary of war from enforcing the Reconstruction Acts (see Judicial Review).
The Court exercised judicial restraint again in Ex parte McCardle (1869), in which
southerners challenged the Reconstruction Act's provision for military trials and the

constitutionality of the Reconstruction Act in general. Although several justices

wanted to
speed the decision, the majority refused, allowing Congress to repeal the legal
provision
under which the case had been brought. The Court then agreed that the repeal had
destroyed
its jurisdiction, even though the case had been pending.
The Court's discretion helped to restore its moral authority as a neutral expositor of
law.
But despite their concerns, most Republicans never intended to attack the Court as
an
institution. On the contrary, they recognized that it would be a crucial instrument
for
carrying out their program to provide federal protection for civil and political rights.
The Republican Program
here were two aspects to the Republican Reconstruction program. First, Republicans
tried
to reshape the southern states in such a way that the state governments would
themselves
provide equal protection for the rights of citizens. Rejecting radical proposals to
redistribute property, take over education, and reduce the states to territories
directly
subject to congressional control, Republicans relied primarily on giving black men
the
right to vote through the Reconstruction Act and the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, ratified in 1870. If politically empowered, black Southerners would be
able
to demand protection in their rights in exchange for their votes, Republicans
believed.
The second element of the Republican Reconstruction program was to pass national
laws and
constitutional amendments barring states from depriving citizens of basic rights and
mandating their equal protection. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 defined as citizens
everyone
born in the United States except untaxed Native Americans, who were still subject
to tribal
government (see Citizenship). It then declared that every citizen was entitled to the
same
basic rights (which it listed) as white citizens, notwithstanding any law, ordinance,
rule,
or custom to the contrary. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 barred discrimination in inns,
transportation, and amusement places. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in
1866, abolished
slavery. The Fourteenth, ratified in 1868 declared all persons born in the United
States
and subject to its jurisdiction to be citizens of the Court. It forbade states from
abridging the privileges or immunities of United States citizens; from depriving any
person
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; and from denying any person
equal
protection of the laws. The Fifteenth Amendment, as already noted, barred both the
states
and the United States from making racial discriminations in voting rights. Each
amendment
authorized Congress to pass appropriate legislation to enforce it, and the
Republicans did
so immediately upon their ratification.
Potential in these laws and amendments was a radical change in the federal
system. The
primary responsibility for protecting the ordinary rights of citizens had always lain
with
the states; the national government had never been able to enforce the few
provisions in
the pre–Civil War Constitution that guaranteed civil liberties against state invasion.
If
the states themselves did protect rights equally obeying the mandates of the new
laws and
constitutional amendments, then the practical change in the federal system would
be
minimal. But if they refused, then Congress would have to enforce them. In that
case
Reconstruction would mark a revolutionary change in the federal system, with the
national
government passing laws forcing the states to fulfill their constitutional
responsibilities
and perhaps directly assuming the job itself. Therefore, the more successfully the
Republicans completed the first part of their program, the less radical would be the
practical effect on federalism of the second.
The form of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments indicated the leading role
Republicans
expected the courts to take in their enforcement. Republicans framed them on the
pattern of
limitations that Article I, section 10 of the Constitution had placed on state authority
to
impair the obligation of contracts, regulate interstate or foreign commerce, and
other
matters—limitations that the federal courts had vigorously enforced before the war
and that
Article VI of the Constitution obligated the state courts to enforce as well.
Moreover, in a series of laws culminating in the Removal Act of 1875, Republicans
authorized parties to remove cases to federal courts when they could not secure
federally
guaranteed rights in the state courts. In fact, the 1875 act authorized the removal
to the
federal courts of any case arising under the federal Constitution, laws, or treaties,
and
for the first time gave the lower federal courts original jurisdiction in all such cases.
Republicans hoped that further national legislation would be unnecessary because
more
direct national enforcement would threaten the balance of the federal system,
something
most Republican policymakers themselves did not desire and something that might
cost them
political support. But when black voters placed Republicans in control of the
governments
of most of the southern states, the great majority of southern whites refused to
accept
their legitimacy. They resisted with terror and violence. When southern Republican
governments proved unable to protect their citizens, the Republican Congress and
President
Ulysses S. Grant were reluctantly forced to protect them by direct legislation.
Congress passed laws making it illegal to conspire to violate rights secured by the
Constitution and laws of the United States. At first the Republicans aimed the laws
at
people acting under the color of state authority, but finally they had to direct the
laws
at terrorism carried out by private citizens. The Force Act of 1871—often called the
Ku
Klux Klan Act—authorized President Grant to suspend the privilege of habeas corpus
and use
troops to suppress violence. Grant regularly sent federal troops to keep the peace
during
election campaigns, at the request of state authorities or United States marshals
and
district attorneys.
Republican legislation after 1870 made the revolution in federalism that had been
potential
in the Civil War Amendments real. A vocal and influential minority of Republican
leaders
insisted that these laws went beyond the powers delegated by the amendments,
arguing they
were aimed at state action alone. Democrats took an even narrower view of their
meaning. By
the mid‐1870s enough northerners were alienated by the course of events to
threaten
Republican control of the national government. As a consequence, Republicans
ended their
most dramatic efforts to intervene in the South, allowing southern Democrats to
regain
control of their state governments through violence and fraud.
ual Federalism
t first the federal courts seemed to sustain a broad interpretation of the power the
Civil
War Amendments had delegated to the national government to protect civil and
political
rights. However, by the time cases reached the Supreme Court, many Americans
had begun to
worry that national efforts to protect rights were undermining the federal system. In
1872
the Supreme Court heard its first case testing a Reconstruction law, Blyew v. United
States. The Court's decision demonstrated its concern that congressional legislation
might
alter the federal system too radically. Blyew and an accomplice had been convicted
in
federal court of murdering blacks in Kentucky. Kentucky had indicted them, but
federal
marshals removed them from state hands and brought them to trial in the federal
district
court because Kentucky did not allow blacks to testify in cases to which they were
not
parties. The Court ruled that only the state and the defendant were parties in a
criminal
case and that therefore Kentucky's indictment of Blyew raised no issues under the
Civil
Rights Act. Congress, the justices held, could not have intended that the federal
courts
take jurisdiction of any case in which a party alleged that a black witness might give
evidence.
This concern reflected the general understanding of federalism that most Americans
shared
in the nineteenth century. No matter where they drew it, nearly all agreed that
there was
some line separating state from federal jurisdiction and marking an area where
state
authority was supreme. Ordinary criminal law enforcement, health and safety
regulations,
and the day‐to‐day relations of local citizens all were on the state side of that line.
Although the majority of the justices of the Supreme Court after the Civil War
identified
with the Republican party, they made clear that they adhered to this traditional
understanding, which scholars call dual federalism. In cases such as Texas v. White
(1869),
the justices affirmed that the national and state governments were equally
sovereign and
supreme in their own spheres, with neither subject to the other within those
spheres. In
Collector v. Day (1871), the Court held that the Constitution imposed implied
limitations
on national authority to legislate within state jurisdiction, even when carrying out
expressly delegated powers.
Like other Republicans, most of the justices were committed to the principle that in
carrying out these responsibilities the states must not invade the liberty of citizens
or
discriminate against citizens on racial grounds. But the Blyew case had raised the
specter
that the national government would enforce that policy by replacing state law
enforcement
in general—in this case replacing the state's murder prosecution with its own. Since
the
enforcement sections of the Civil War Amendments gave the broadest latitude to
congressional power, authorizing all legislation “appropriate” to carry out their
provisions, the prospect was very real. According to the principle firmly established
in
the great case of McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), any federal laws that “are plainly
adapted”
to achieving a purpose authorized by the Constitution were “appropriate” and thus
constitutional (p. 421).
The first dispute to directly test the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment before
the
Supreme Court raised the problem starkly. It did not involve the rights of blacks at
all.
Instead, the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) involved Louisiana butchers who claimed
that a
health law regulating the slaughtering of animals deprived them of their right as
citizens
to freely practice their occupations. Nothing could have been better calculated to
demonstrate to the justices the far‐reaching potential of the Fourteenth
Amendment. Even if
the justices ruled that the law was a reasonable exercise of the state's police power,
it
would encourage future Fourteenth Amendment challenges to ordinary state laws
simply by
considering the issue. It would, the majority of the justices said, make the Court “a
perpetual censor upon all legislation of the states” that could be construed to
violate
someone's civil rights (p. 78).
To avoid the result, the majority of the justices arrived at a tortured construction of
the
Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The amendment
barred the
states only from depriving persons of those privileges or immunities they held as
United
States citizens, as distinct from those they held as state citizens. Ordinary rights,
such
as those to follow one's occupation, make contracts, and dispose of property were
associated with state citizenship and were not the subject of the Fourteenth
Amendment. The
judges in effect avoided a result that Republicans had not intended when they
passed the
Fourteenth Amendment by construing an important section of it in a way they had
not
intended either. The result of this opinion, never reversed, was virtually to eliminate
the
Privileges or Immunities Clause as protection for civil liberty.
The Slaughterhouse decision did not make clear just what were the “privileges or
immunities
of citizens of the United States.” Some federal law‐enforcement officials maintained
that
they must include those specified in the Bill of Rights, since those were the
privileges
Americans had held in their relationship to the government of the United States. In
Hurtado
v. California (1884), the Court interpreted the meaning of the amendment's Due
Process
Clause in a way that clearly precluded it from protecting any of the liberties
specified in
the Bill of Rights.
The justices manifested a similar concern for maintaining the federal system in
cases
involving federal prosecutions of criminal conspiracies to deprive persons of their
constitutional rights. They sustained the Ninth Circuit Court's vigorous defense of
the
rights of Chinese against discriminatory legislation in California and Nevada. The
justices
also firmly sustained national power to prosecute any state officer, even a judge,
who
violated Fourteenth or Fifteenth Amendment rights or laws governing federal
elections; they
rejected arguments that prosecution of state officials violated the basic tenet of
dual
federalism—that the state and national governments were equally sovereign and
that neither
could be subjected to the other. The justices dismissed dual‐federalist objections
and
sustained Congress's power to authorize the removal of cases from state to federal
courts
when parties could not secure equal rights there. But the Court drew the line when
the
federal government tried to prosecute private citizens who did not act under state
authority. Replacing state enforcement of ordinary laws with federal enforcement
posed too
great a threat to the federal system.
he Court Restricts Reconstruction Reforms
n a series of cases, the justices tried to work out a position that both preserved the
federal system and saved national power to protect the fundamental civil and
political
rights of the former slaves. To preserve traditional federalism the Court posited the
state‐action doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment, articulated with particular
clarity in
the Civil Rights Cases (1883). The amendment did not authorize the national
government to
protect rights directly, the justices held. The government could act only against
state
action that deprived rights. The Court's language has been taken to mean that only
positive
state actions are subject to the amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment, which was
not framed
in terms of state action, did authorize Congress to protect basic rights of freedom
against
violation from any source. But only the most fundamental of rights came under that
protection. Despite its apparent state‐action language, the Fifteenth Amendment
did invest
people with a positive right to vote without racial discrimination, and Congress
could
enforce that right against anyone who violated it whether under color of state
authority or
not. Finally, the nature of the federal system implied that Congress had plenary
authority
over federal elections, and it could pass any law whatsoever to protect their
integrity.
All this suggested rather broad congressional power to protect civil and political
rights,
but the actual decisions in which these positions were taken badly undermined the
Republican Reconstruction program. Ironically, Republicans had avoided framing
Reconstruction statutes in such a way as to specifically protect blacks from
discrimination. The Court therefore declared several provisions of the Enforcement
Acts
unconstitutional because they failed to specify that private individuals could be
prosecuted only if they deprived people of rights on account of their race or
previous
condition of servitude. Likewise, the Court found indictments wanting for failing to
specify such racial motivations. In the political climate of the times, the decisions
were
perceived to be virtual endorsements of southern violence and signs of hostility to
Reconstruction in general.
Likewise, the Civil Rights Cases, while articulating grounds under which Congress
could
protect fundamental rights under the Thirteenth Amendment, ruled the Civil Rights
Act of
1875 unconstitutional. Observers naturally noted its trenchant articulation of the
state‐
action doctrine and the apparent endorsement of racial discrimination more than its
reservation of power to Congress.
Finally, after Congress narrowly failed to pass a tough, new law to enforce the
Fifteenth
Amendment in 1890, new justices on the Supreme Court did take overtly racist
constitutional
positions. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) the Court sustained state‐required
segregation of
government and other public facilities in an opinion that not only found the laws
constitutional but that seemed to endorse them. Although the decision found
separate‐but‐
equal facilities to conform to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment, the
Court for decades ignored the equality part of the separate‐but‐equal doctrine and
never
applied it to laws mandating segregation of private business. In James v. Bowman
(1903) the
Court applied the state‐action doctrine to the Fifteenth Amendment (see
Segregation, De
Jure).
In sum, the Supreme Court's effort to preserve both the federal system and national
power
to protect rights proved a failure, and it has generally been condemned by
historians and
legal scholars, who have often failed to recognize the degree to which the effort was
made.
Beginning in the 1910s, the Court began a slow process of ruling unconstitutional
state
laws that too overtly violated the Civil War Amendments. Not until the middle of the
twentieth century would it reverse the crippling decisions of the 1890s and 1900s.
Federalism and Economic Change
From its founding, the United States had always been a commercial nation. The
Constitution
itself was framed and ratified by men who believed that commercial success
required
stronger central government. But between the Civil War and the first decade of the
twentieth century, commercial activity expanded and changed radically. A great
revolution
in transportation, precipitated by the application of steam engines to sea and land
travel,
created a national, and to some degree international, marketplace.
American agricultural products, always exported in large amounts, came into
competition
with newly opened European and Asian agricultural regions. Prices declined for
many crops
and economic pressure on farmers intensified, especially in the West and South,
where farm
debt was highest. Local manufacturers, no longer isolated, had to meet competitors
from
around the nation, although a system of protective tariffs kept international
competitors
out of American markets. Companies sought to survive price competition by
increasing output
while reducing production costs. Both goals were accomplished by the application of
technology to manufacturing. Not only did new industrial technology increase the
amount one
worker could produce, it simplified jobs, permitting the substitution of low‐paid
unskilled
and semiskilled labor for highly skilled craftsmen.
Huge industrial concerns began to replace small producers. In 1900 nearly eleven
million
people worked in manufacturing, mining, construction, and transportation, with
another
three million in trade and finance, outnumbering those in agriculture by some three
million.
The nationalization of the economy led the federal government to take a larger role
in
promoting and regulating it. Congress established a protective tariff to shelter
American
industries from international competition in their home market, created a national
banking
system, and regulated both the amount of currency in circulation and its
distribution. It
subsidized railroad and canal building, the improvement of harbors, the
establishment of
rural roads and stage lines, and the operation of international steamship
companies. In
1887 Congress established the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate
railroads, and in
1890 it passed the Sherman Antitrust Act to combat overconcentration of economic
power. It
came under pressure to set an example in labor relations by establishing an eight‐
hour day
for government employees. Slowly, it began to exercise a national police power
through
regulation of interstate and foreign commerce and by barring the importation of
undesirable
goods and banning their distribution through the mail or interstate commerce.
Some of these
activities came under attack in the courts for going beyond the powers the
Constitution
delegated to the national government.
State Regulation
economic and social changes also put pressure on state governments, which had to
provide
services to a growing, more urban population and faced demands from various
groups to help
cope with problems that grew out of the economic transition. Like the national
government,
state governments had always responded to demands to help develop American
transportation
and industry, but in a simpler society the free market had seemed to provide
adequate
regulation, with individuals protecting their own interests through freely made
contracts.
The triumphant antislavery movement had embodied this understanding, granting
to black
Americans the same ability to protect their interests as whites.
The fervor of the antislavery struggle recommitted most Americans to this system
just as
economic change made its effectiveness questionable. The traditional system had
been based
on a equality of power between contracting parties that the growth of big business
destroyed. Yet many objected to demands for government regulation to protect
farmers,
workers, and others from the sometimes devastating effects of the change, or to
protect
consumers in general from the growing power of producers and transportation
companies. Such
regulations smacked of “class legislation”—the use of government power to benefit
one
person or class in the community at the expense of another. Shocked by the
proliferation of
demands for such legislation—by farmers, by workers, by blacks in the South and
immigrants
in the cities of the North—many Americans perceived a concentrated “socialistic” or
“agrarian” demand for the redistribution of property. In response, they insisted that
government had no right to redistribute wealth. The free market distributed rewards
justly,
they maintained, and the government must not intervene; it must follow the “let‐
alone”
principle—what political economists call “laissez‐faire.”
Moreover, since the national companies, especially the railroads and insurance
industry,
were controlled by northeastern financial interests, southerners and westerners
viewed
excess profits and rates that favored eastern over local merchants as exactions,
unfairly
transferring wealth from one region of the country to another. Some state
regulations were
designed to bring these “alien” forces under a degree of local control and prevent
the
worst abuses. In turn, the owners and managers of the regulated industries
complained of
local bias.
Nonetheless, state governments often responded to demands for regulations. At the
behest of
farmers and small businessmen many states passed so‐called Granger laws (named
after the
farmers' organization, the Patrons of Husbandry, or Grange). These laws created
commissions
to regulate the practices and rates charged by railroads and grain warehouses.
They created
safety bureaus to set working conditions in mines and dangerous industries. They
barred
contracts that called for payment in company scrip; they set maximum working
hours; and
they forbade the employment of women and children in certain capacities. As labor
began to
organize, some states banned yellow dog contracts, which made employment
dependent on an
agreement not to join a union.
Defeated in the legislatures, businessmen often turned to the courts—and
ultimately the
Supreme Court—for succor, arguing that such legislation violated constitutional
protections
of liberty, unfairly oppressed out‐of‐state corporations, or infringed on interstate
commerce. The Court had to deal with the beginnings of the modern regulatory
state in the
framework of a federal system; it had to decide not only what the Constitution
permitted
government to do, but which government had the constitutional authority to do it.
The problem of adjusting constitutional doctrines of federalism to the modern
national
economy proved particularly difficult. The Court was committed to preserving the
traditional federal system, yet it was extremely sensitive to the pressure on local
governments to discriminate against outside economic interests on behalf of their
own.
Likewise, the justices were aware of the economic burdens that a myriad of
conflicting
local regulations placed upon national businesses.
The Court took a firm line when western and southern state and local governments
tried to
escape paying the principle and interest on bonds issued to subsidize railroad
building or
to avoid fulfilling guarantees to pay off railroad company bonds when a company
defaulted.
The issue arose as many railroads failed to complete their lines or went bankrupt in
the
hard times of the late 1860s and the 1870s. If the states succeeded in repudiating
the
debts, eastern and foreign bondholders would be the losers. Local governments
alleged that
many of the bonds were secured or issued fraudulently. State courts ruled
guarantees of
railroad bonds null and void because legislatures had lacked the constitutional
authority
to issue them. But in a line of cases stemming from Gelpcke v. Dubuque (1864) the
Court
protected the out‐of‐state investors, holding that such repudiation violated the
Constitution's obligation‐of‐contracts clause.
The Court likewise protected representatives of out‐of‐state corporations from
special
taxes and discriminatory license fees. The key cases were Welton v. Missouri (1876)
and
Robbins v. Taxing District of Shelby County (1887). The first overturned a law
requiring
licenses to sell goods produced out of state, the second overturned a law requiring
a
license of all traveling salesmen. Similarly, the Court overturned freight taxes levied
on interstate commerce.
The federal courts also took a generous view of the Removal Act of 1875, permitting
almost
any out‐of‐state corporation to remove a case from the state to the federal courts
on an
allegation of bias. At the same time, out‐of‐state corporations became more and
more likely
to take advantage of new laws to bring cases in federal rather than state courts. All
this
end to a significant increase in the business of the Supreme Court and the other
federal
courts, which ultimately forced Congress to restructure the federal judiciary in the
circuit Court of Appeals Act of 1891 (see Judiciary Act of 1869). That law created
federal
circuit courts of appeals with final jurisdiction in many areas, subject only to the
supreme Court's certification by writ of certiorari that it accepted an appeal.
Yet the justices also tried to maintain states' authority to regulate businesses within
their boundaries. In Paul v. Virginia (1869), for example, they declared that the
insurance
business involved state rather than interstate commerce. They then reaffirmed the
old rule
that states could bar companies incorporated elsewhere from doing business within
their
boundaries. The Court sustained state taxes challenged on the ground that they
inhibited
interstate commerce. It sustained state temperance and prohibition legislation
against
challenges that it trespassed on the interstate commerce power reserved to
Congress.
The Court at first sustained state efforts to regulate interstate railroads. In Munn v.
Illinois (1877), it upheld the far‐reaching authority states granted to their railroad
commissions. By the 1880s, however the Court decided that such authority was
incompatible
with the national transportation system that had developed. It began to overturn
various
health, safety, and civil rights laws that states had applied to interstate
transportation
companies. In Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railway Co. v. Illinois (1886), it limited
state
power over railroads in general, precipitating the creation of the Interstate
Commerce
Commission in 1887.

25. By 1877, why were there were no Republican governments left in

the South?
In order to settle the contested 1876 election, a bargain was struck that also ended
Reconstruction. Democrat Samuel J. Tilden led Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in
popular
votes, and 203-165 in the electoral college, but fraud and violence in South
Carolina,
Florida, and Louisiana, and questions about an Oregon elector's eligibility, left 20
electoral votes in doubt. Splitting over each state's contradictory returns, the
Democratic
House and Republican Senate created a fifteen-member electoral commission of ten
congressmen and five Supreme Court justices, divided by party, with one
independent,
Justice David Davis. When Davis declined to serve, Republican Joseph Bradley
replaced him,
and the commission gave Hayes all 20 votes, prompting a Democratic filibuster.
Representatives of the candidates and parties then negotiated a compromise
through
correspondence and at a meeting at Washington's Wormley House. The South
would accept
Hayes's election, back Republican James A. Garfield for House Speaker, and protect
black
rights; Republicans would provide federal aid for internal improvements, patronage,
and,
especially, home rule. But Garfield was defeated for Speaker, the government failed
to
subsidize improvements, and Hayes dispensed patronage and followed existing
policy by
removing federal troops from the South. The final southern Republican
governments, all in
the disputed states, collapsed, leading to the Democratic Solid South and violence
and
discrimination toward blacks.