A Republican Empire is Born

• • Treaty of Paris 1783: Britain gives up claims to trans-Appalachian region
  • Leaves the natives to the “care” of the Americans
  • Many Americans want to destroy native communities to take their land
  • Knox wants to assimilate natives into European-American society + dividing tribal lands among individual native families
  • Families become citizens of states
  • Help integrate them to become “american”
  • Natives can choose to:
  • Make treaties for land
  • Sell land for $$ by U.S. citizens
  • Resist through fighting (ex: Pontiac)
  • Assimilate
  • Native resistance → U.S. power expands
• Sham Treaties and Indian Lands

  • Sham = fake treaties, not honored, often forced
  • Struggle between Natives and Europeans revolves around land rights
  • U.S. government asserts sovereignty over trans-Appalachian west
  • Natives reject (weren’t conquered, didn’t sign Paris treaty)
  • U.S. threatens military action + forces the Iroquois to move
  • Speculators bribe for more land
  • Ohio Valley:
  • Fort McIntosh + Fort Finney treaties: push natives to cede most of Ohio
  • Was quickly repudiated
  • Fort harmon
  • Western Confederacy is formed to take care of American expeditionary forces
• • 1780s: Iroquois are forced to give up much of their land in western NY and western PA
  • Treaty of Fort Stanwix
  • 1789-1791: form Western Confederacy (under Little Turtle)
  • Crushes American forces
  • Washington doubles size of army + sends general “Mad Anthony”
  • Battle of Fallen Timbers: Confederacy is defeated
  • Armed diplomacy: treaty but threat of war
• The Treaty of Greenville

  • Washington doesn’t want an alliance between Western Confederacy and British Canada → doubles the size of U.S. Army + tells General Wayne to lead new expedition (defeats confederacy at Battle of Fallen Timbers)
• Treaty of Greenville (part 2)

  • 1795: negotiators acknowledge native ownership of the land + pays in various ways for most of Ohio
  • Natives accept American sovereignty
  • Causes GB to reduce trade + military aid to natives (Jay’s Treaty)
  • Concern: if British help natives, it’ll hurt American chances of taking the land
  • Causes more migration
  • More land = more farm families = more conflict over land + hunting rights
• Assimilation Rejected

  • U.S. government encourages Natives to assimilate into (become part of) white society
  • Wants to convert them into farmers, citizens, and Christians
  • Mostly rejected by natives
  • Many natives were nomadic
  • Natives want to preserve their culture + avoid wholesale assimilation
  • Maintain values + beliefs
  • Expel white missionaries, force Christianized natives to participate in tribal rites
  • There are 2 ways to god
  • Some try to find a middle ground
  • Reject idea of turning warriors into farmers and women into domestic “helpmates”
• Migration and the Changing Farm Economy

  • Native American resistance doesn’t stop advancement of settlers (just slows it down)
  • Migrants move out of southern states (1790s)
• Southern Migrants

  • White tenant farmers + struggling yeomen families enter Kentucky and Tennessee (+ Ohio, Indiana) via the Cumberland Gap
  • Fleeing from planter-controlled society (want more freedom + grow cotton & hemp)
  • Many Kentucky and Tennessee settlers lack $$ to buy land
  • Poor migrants occupy “back waste vacant Lands” and become subsistence farmers
• • VA legislators allow poor settlers to buy at most 1,400 acres of land at reduced prices but grant 100,000 acre tracts to 21 groups of speculators + leaders
  • Elite own ¼ of the state
  • ½ the white men own no land (live as quasi-legal squatters or tenant farmers)
  • No land + opposition to slavery = more migration into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois
  • Land distribution is unequal in Ohio too…
• • Southern planters + slaves from the Carolinas move towards the Gulf of Mexico
  • Set up new estates in GA, SC, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana
  • Migration is driven by demand for cotton
  • 1750: raw wool and cotton demand increases (cotton gin, spinning jenny, etc.) → Industrial Revolution
  • More slaves before slave trade cutoff
  • Alabama sells $7 million of uncleared land
• Exodus from New England

  • Southerners → Appalachians → Gulf Coast
  • New England migrants from MA + CT move north + east
  • New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine
  • Farmers move west for land for kids
  • Some go to wester New York
  • 1820: almost 800,000 New Englanders live in settlements from Albany to Buffalo
  • Many went to Ohio + Indiana
  • Most of Northwest Territory = New England communities
  • New York: speculators w/ connections take best land + lease farms to tenants for $$
  • New Englanders prefer to buy farms
  • Sign contracts w’ Holland Land Co
  • Lets settlers pay for farms as they worked them
• Innovation on Eastern Farms

  • Farm economy changes in NY, OH, KY – cheaper grains
  • New England farmers have to switch to potatoes (high yield + nutritious)
  • Middle Atlantic farmers buy better equipment
  • Tech + change in crop = production stays high
  • Progressive farming from British agricultural reformers → PA
  • Yeomen farmers (sheep)
  • Year-round planting cycle
  • Working longer + harder = increased productivity
  • Higher standard of living
  • Economy boost
• • 1801-1825:
  • Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe each serve 2 terms as president (all from VA)
  • Support from farmers in South + West & Republican majorities in Congress
  • “Virginia Dynasty” completes Revolution of 1800
  • Reverses many Federalist policies + supports westward expansion
  • Jefferson takes office
  • Barbary States raid merchant ships in Mediterranean – U.S. had to pay an annual bribe for protection
  • Jefferson refuses, attacks pirates’ home ports → ultimately led to peace treaty
  • Government was filled with Federalists, Jefferson complains
• • KY + VA repudiate Alien + Sedition (unconstitutional)
  • Marbury v. Madison
  • Voided part of Judiciary Act of 1789 → Court does not have constitutional power to enforce appointment?
  • Jefferson reverses Federalist Parties
  • Alien, Sedition, Naturalization
  • Shrinks size + power of national gov’t
  • Reduces size of permanent army
  • Tolerates Bank of US
  • Albert Gallatin (conservative that thought debt was evil)
  • Reduced debt by $36 million
• Jefferson and the West

  • Jefferson takes over Western settlement
  • Celebrates yeomen farmers
  • Supports Pinckney’s Treaty (1795)
  • 1796: Federalist-dominated Congress sets price of land high ($2/acre)
  • Jefferson cuts it down to $1.25, eases credit terms, lets squatters buy farms
  • Homestead Act of 1862: Congress gives farmsteads to settlers for free
• The Louisiana Purchase

  • 1799: Napoleon tries to reestablish French American empire
  • 1801: coerces Spain into signing secret treaty that returns Louisiana to France + restricts American access to New Orleans (violates Pinckney’s Treaty)
  • Saint Domingue costs France a lot of $$
  • Napoleon’s actions (Haiti, Louisiana) make Jefferson reconsider pro-French policy
  • Jefferson sends Monroe to negotiate alliance w/ GB
  • Jefferson buys Louisiana for $15 million (Louisiana Purchase, 1803)
  • Forced Jefferson to reconsider strict interpretation of Constitution
• Secessionist Schemes

  • Louisiana → problems
  • New England Federalists want to leave the Union + form a confederacy of northeastern states
  • Secessionists win Burr’s favor
  • Hamilton accuses Burr of trying to destroy the union, fight a pistol duel that ends up killing Hamilton
  • Louisiana Purchase increases party conflict + generates secessionist schemes
  • Challenges Federalist No. 10 (diverse + large > small)
• • Burr → secessionist scheme in the Southwest
  • Conspires w/ General James Wilkinson (military governor of Louisiana Territory) to seize territory in New Spain or establish Louisiana as a separate nation
  • Wilkinson = Spanish spy + traitor, betrays and arrests burr
  • Bur is acquitted of treason
• Louisiana Purchase

  • Felt like they had to buy New Orleans (Napoleon)
  • Send negotiators
  • Napoleon sells all of Louisiana (wants to focus on European wars, doesn’t need any food for Haiti)
  • Originally, Louisiana was for feeding Haiti
  • Lose Haiti = no need for Louisiana
  • Doubles size of U.S.
  • Gives us permanent access to MI river + New Orleans → economic growth, westward expansion, buffer to the west (foreign policy)
  • Allows us to be more isolationist
• • Negative effects of Louisiana Purchase: who gets land, how to distribute, adds to debt, makes Jefferson reconsider his “strict interpretation” (should be insilencio/quiet)
  • Repercussions in north (slavery)
  • Fears imbalance between free north and slave south
  • Northeast fears that workers move from factories + trade to agrarian economy in the west
  • Conflict with natives
• Lewis and Clark Meet the Mandans and Sioux

  • Jefferson wants info on Louisiana but concerned about intruders
  • Hudson Bay Company + Northwest Company trade for furs on upper Missouri
  • 1804: Jefferson sends William Clark + Meriwether Lewis to explore
• • Mandans:
  • Live by horticulture (plant agriculture) and grow corn, beans, squash
  • Got horses by supplying food to nomadic Plains Indians
  • Traded w/ Europeans for guns, iron, textiles
  • Smallpox epidemic → threatened by Sioux
  • Sioux:
  • Lived in prairie + lake, but numbers rise and less fish so live as nomads
  • Become fighters
  • “Pirates of the Missouri”
  • Dominate buffalo trade
• • 1805 (spring): Lewis + Clark add Toussaint Charbonneau + Sacagawea
  • All the natives they meet want guns to defend themselves from other armed tribes
  • 1806: Lewis & Clark provide Jefferson w/ first maps of wilderness + natural resources + inhabitants
  • Americans envision a nation that spans the continent
  • Told to look at natural resources + Native Americans
  • Gives many Americans the delusions of grandeur
  • That they’re going to own the continent