Question 1

How did the right to vote and the benefits of citizenship become accessible to more people from the American Revolution through Reconstruction? Who was left out of this trend toward political democratization?

Accepted Answer

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Democratization for White Men: White men benefited from a number of changes in voting requirements in the nineteenth century. Twelve of the original thirteen states enacted property qualifications for voting in the 1780s, as only property owners were presumed to have the independence of mind to make wise political choices. In the 1790s, Vermont became the first state to enfranchise all adult males, and four other states soon broadened suffrage considerably by allowing all male taxpayers to vote. As new states joined the Union, most opted for suffrage for all free white men, which added pressure for eastern states to consider broadening their suffrage laws. Between 1800 and 1830, greater democratization became a contentious issue. In the East, half a dozen states had passed suffrage reform by 1820. As more and more white men earned the right to vote, voting laws increased their significance. By the election of 1828, eighteen of the twenty-four states allowed the voters rather than state legislators to choose the electors in the Electoral College. Politics had become much more democratic, and the nation's political parties responded by gearing their campaigns toward common Americans
African Americans and Reconstruction: During the first half of the nineteenth century, the general pattern was one of expanded suffrage for whites and a total eclipse of suffrage for blacks. Even states in the North that had allowed blacks to vote after the Revolution passed new laws to curtail black suffrage. In the South, where the majority of blacks were enslaved, blacks had almost no political influence. Passed during Reconstruction, the Fourteenth Amendment made African Americans citizens and penalized states that prevented adult men of any race from voting. The Fifteenth Amendment explicitly prohibited states from depriving any citizen of the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. What followed was a dramatic increase in black political participation and office holding. The Fifteenth Amendment, however, did not absolutely guarantee the right to vote; it only prohibited exclusion on the grounds of race. This distinction allowed white southerners to create nominally nonracial ways to exclude blacks from the political sphere around the turn of the twentieth century.
Denial of Suffrage for Women: Abigail Adams's call for her husband to "Remember the Ladies" fell on deaf ears, and women remained outside the formal political process through Reconstruction. The legal doctrine of feme covert held that wives had no independent or legal personhood, meaning they could not vote. Single women were not allowed to vote either. Few men even stopped to question excluding women from voting. While New Jersey allowed women and free blacks to vote after 1790, an 1807 law explicitly disfranchised them. Women's suffrage was rarely addressed in the halls of Congress, despite the protests of women's rights activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. Even during Reconstruction, when the government radically revamped the definition of citizenship as it pertained to race, officials ignored the calls for women's suffrage. The Fourteenth Amendment marked the first time the work male appeared in the Constitution, and the Fifteenth Amendment included no provision for gender discrimination.

Question 2

After the American Revolution, white Americans pushed the federal government to remove Indians in order to clear the West for white settlement. How did the government accomplish its goal of Indian removal in Ohio, New York, Indiana, and Georgia from 1776 to 1840?

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Ohio: George Washington doubled the U.S. military presence in Ohio and appointed new commander General Anthony Wayne. Wayne's forces defeated the Indians at the battle of Fallen Timbers. The Indian defeat resulted in the Treaty of Greenville, negotiated in 1795. In this treaty, Americans offered treaty goods worth $25,000 and promised additional shipments every year, hoping to create Indian dependence on American goods. In exchange the Indians ceded most of Ohio to the Americans. The allowance of goods from Americans did not help the Indians, as much of it came in the form of liquor.
New York: The Confederation government wanted to end hostilities and secure land cessions in order to sell the land for revenue. Congress called the Iroquois to Fort Stanwix in 1784 to attempt to gain the Indians' land. Americans demanded a return of prisoners of war, recognition of the Confederation's power to negotiate (rather than that of the individual states), and a cession of Indian land from Fort Niagara due south. Indians balked but ultimately signed the treaty. The tribes not at the meeting tried to disavow the treaty as a document signed under coercion by virtual hostages, but the Confederation government ignored them and made plans to survey and develop the Ohio territory. The state of New York began surveying the land as well, believing the Confederation government lacked the power to implement the treaty.
Indiana: In Indiana, territorial governor William Henry Harrison had extracted Indian lands through a divide-and-conquer strategy. As the Shawnee chief Tecumseh solidified his confederacy, however, Harrison's strategy became more difficult. In 1809, while Tecumseh was away on a recruiting trip, Harrison assembled the leaders of the Potawatomi, Miami, and Delaware tribes to negotiate the Treaty of Fort Wayne, which falsely promised that this was the last cession of land the United States would seek. Tecumseh was furious at Harrison and local leaders for signing the treaty, and he went south to seek alliances. Harrison took advantage of Tecumseh's absence and attacked Prophetstown on the Tippecanoe River in November 1811. The two-hour battle resulted in the deaths of sixty-two Americans and forty Indians before the Prophet's forces fled. The battle of Tippecanoe motivated Tecumseh to fight against the Americans on the British side of the War of 1812.
Georgia: President Andrew Jackson argued that the government had to move Indians to the West in order to save their civilization from whites. Congress supported Jackson's goal and passed the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which directed the mandatory relocation of eastern tribes to territory west of the Mississippi River. Refusing to back down, Georgia Cherokees mounted a legal challenge to being treated as subjects. In 1832, the Court's Worcester v. Georgia decision upheld the territorial sovereignty of the Cherokee people. Jackson ignored the court's decision and continued to press for removal. In 1835, an unauthorized faction of Cherokees signed a treaty selling all tribal lands to the state, and Georgia promptly resold the land to whites. The Cherokee faced a deadline of May 1838 for voluntary evacuation; when they refused to leave, they were forced on a 1,200-mile journey west under armed guard. Twenty-five percent of the traveling Cherokees died on the trip, which came to be called the Trail of Tears.

Question 3

How did African Americans take advantage of the social upheaval that occurred during and after the American Revolution and the Civil War to make a case for their equality and their freedom?

Accepted Answer

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Fighting for the British during the Revolution: The American Revolution provided opportunities for slaves to seek their freedom. Black Americans were at first excluded from the Continental army, but as manpower needs increased, Congress permitted free blacks to enlist. About 5,000 black men served on the rebel side during the Revolution, nearly all from northern states. On the British side, General Henry Clinton announced that slaves owned by American masters could gain freedom by joining the British army. Thousands of self-liberated blacks fled to British lines, but, for most of them, their hopes of freedom did not come to fruition. The British never intended to emancipate the slaves; they only wanted to destabilize patriot planters and gain manpower. Still, about 8,000 to 10,000 emancipated blacks left the newly established United States after the revolution, resettling in England or Sierra Leone or moving north to Canada or west to Indian Country.
Petitioning for Freedom in the North after the Revolution: In the North, slaves took advantage of the language of liberty to argue for their freedom. Northern slaves filed petitions to obtain their freedom, but they were not successful. In Massachusetts, however, many slaves, such as Elizabeth Freeman, successfully sued for freedom in the courts. As a result, slavery in Massachusetts was effectively abolished by judicial decisions by 1789. Other northern states passed gradual emancipation laws. The protests of blacks forced every state from Pennsylvania north to acknowledge that slavery was fundamentally inconsistent with revolutionary ideology. To the south, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia eased restrictions on individual acts of emancipation.
Joining Union Lines and Destabilizing Slavery during the Civil War: As the North experienced manpower shortages, they reluctantly turned to African Americans. Although blacks faced discrimination and violence in the military, 179,000 African American men served in the Union army. No person or group did more to force emancipation than the slaves themselves. Blacks fled to Union lines by the thousands, forcing slavery on the Union's wartime agenda. At first, Union officers sent slaves back, but as their need for laborers increased, they began refusing to turn slaves over. In 1862, Congress forbade returning fugitive slaves to their masters. The slaves who remained on plantations subverted plantation discipline. They got to the fields late, worked indifferently, and quit early.
Political Success during Reconstruction: Following the War, during Reconstruction, African Americans made up the majority of southern Republicans. While they never had the influence in the party that whites had, newly freed blacks voted, ran for office, and served in high government positions.

Question 4

How did women express themselves politically and shape American society even while being denied entry into formal politics? Consider especially women's roles in religious and reform movements and in the political arena.

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Question 5

How did the Spanish and the British differ in their treatment of Native Americans? How were their methods similar? Which method formed the model for the United States' relations with Indians after the Revolutionary War?

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Question 6

How did the issue of slavery complicate territorial expansion? How did American officials attempt to solve the problem of slavery in the territories?

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Question 7

Assess the importance of religion in early American history. How were the Massachusetts Bay and Virginia colonies different in terms of their commitment to religion? What trends contributed to the First and Second Great Awakenings? Why was religious fervor greater at some times but not others?

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Question 8

How did the dominant system of labor change during the colonial era in the Chesapeake? What factors caused these changes? How did labor changes reshape social class in the South?

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Question 9

How did the United States use international diplomacy and military might to expand its western border to the Pacific Ocean in less than a century? What were its motives?

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Question 10

Explain the economic, social, and labor differences between the North and South during the antebellum period. What accounted for these differences?

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Quiz 32: Citizenship, Indian Removal, Equality, Women's Rights, Native American Relations, Slavery, Religion, Labor, Westward Expansion, and North-South Differences.