Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815

By 1815 the U.S. population was nearly 8.5 million and more than doubled since the first census in 1790.

By 1815 the U.S. had added 5 states and 5 territories to the original 13 states.

The society of the 18th century especially in the North had dramatically changed by 1815.

Americans generally, and Northerners especially, were more egalitarian and enterprising than 18th century Americans.

Following the fall of Napoleon there was a conservative reaction in Europe and Americans now definitely were set apart from the Europeans and instead looked West.

Anyone younger than than 40 in 1815 (85% of the population)and born in America had never been the subject of a monarch.

Only seven of the original forty-one members of the last meeting of the Constitutional Convention were still alive in 1815.

The embargo and non-intercourse acts led to Americans investing more in domestic manufacturing and trade

With the increase in internal trade came the need for internal improvements.

Social changes followed with shopkeepers and others involves involved in internal trade referring to themselves as “merchants” which used to be a term reserved for those taking part in external trade.

While factory work increased dramatically what was most prominent was home manufacturing done by families (often who were farmers) to increase income whereas in Europe home manufacturing was mostly accomplished through a system of capitalists subcontracting work out.

In 1810 90% of the $42 million in manufacturing production came from households.

Republicans had to change their political philosophy to accommodate the rise of domestic manufacturing.

No longer was the ideal American society one that was agricultural but one that was also commercial and even the most ardent Republicans like Jefferson came around to this view though Jefferson and others only wanted enough manufacturing to meet domestic needs.

This was largely a result of viewing the commercial conflicts with European powers in previous years as threatening to American independence.

No Republicans wanted industry and commercial activity to lead to the type of industrial cities in Europe though.

New views on trade began to take hold viewing internal trade as a source of strength whereas in the past it was only foreign trade that many assumed added to a nation’s wealth and development.

While America was rapidly increasing its industry it was still overwhelmingly rural.

19 of 20 Americans lived in rural places (less than 2,500 inhabitants) in 1815 and between 1800 and 1820 the percentage of the labor force employed in agriculture actually rose 89.5% to 91.7%.

There were 61 urban places but only 5 had populations greater than 25,000 and no American city was comparable to the large European ones at the time.

With aristocratic Federalists a spent force in American life by the second decade of the 1800s the bulk of the Northern population, largely Republicans, never developed the same sense of being middling as their counterparts in Britain.

With no powerful aristocracy left in the U.S. the middling sorts in the North viewed themselves as an independent majority to be taken seriously whereas in Great Britain the middle class was exactly that: a class between the aristocrats who held their position due to birth and education and the destitute.

The idea of American society being one where everyone was equal and middle class was a myth as there were vast differences between slaves and free persons, men and women, slave holding planters and small farmers, etc.

But what was true was that Americans did feel they were equal to each other after all with no aristocratic class based off education and birth anyone could make their own way and become wealthy.

Benjamin Franklin became very popular during this era because he was seen as the most ideal republican Founding Father.

With Americans needing to tie themselves to the most important act in their history, the Revolution, there weren’t many Revolutionary leaders they could look to with many of them being aristocratic and slaveholders, or, in other words, not very republican.

Franklin, having risen from obscurity to be a successful businessman, spoke to Americans who were trying to make their own way in the highly commercial society of early 19th century America.

With Americans viewing their society as more homogenous than before and prideful of the fact that ordinary citizens held great authority the term “democracy” stopped being a pejorative and the Republican Party became known as the Democratic-Republican Party mostly in the North with many members just referring to themselves as “Democrats”.

With this change there was also a change in how political representation was viewed with the old view that politicians were supposed to be disinterested and excercise their judgement no longer popular and the new view that took hold was that politicians were to be temporary agents of those they represented.

One of the best examples of this new tension was with the Compensation Bill of 1816 passed by Congress to raise their pay by essentially 100%.

Ironically it ended up being repealed after much public pressure by those who viewed it as un-democratic even though a pay raise for Congress would allow those other than the wealthy to have an easier time of holding office and most of the 14th Congress who passed the bill were voted out later that year.

By 1815 the importance of the Enlightenment also began to be less significant in important ways.

Culturally Americans began to see the natural world around them as important and something to be proud of whereas to Enlightenment thinkers nature, in America especially, was something to be afraid of, not inspired by, and a sign of an absence of civilization.

Learning and science (the two were related) were to be abstract and removed from society to Enlightenment thinkers but in the new republican world it was to serve society with Enlightment champions such as Jefferson and Adams urging chemists to apply their learning to practical purposes like making better ciders.

Though in other respects Jefferson stayed true to Enlightenment views on science and society with an example being his alarm at medical research taking place in hospitals.

It was an Enlightenment exercise to try to find single truths for complex problems (Benjamin Rush for example narrowed all diseases to one cause and argued that blood letting was the treatment for any affliction) but it was now better to view complex problems as exactly that and with answers to these problems best arrived at by consulting a wide variety of opinions.

Being educated wasn’t necessary for your opinions to be taken seriously.

With all opinions now having merit truth and knowledge were difficult to find and the lines between things like religion and magic or science and superstition became blurred.

With all opinions now having the potential to be true and believed all opinions also could be doubted and Americans followed a Lockean sensational epistemology as a result.

Americans would only believe what they could experience or confirm with their senses and distrust anything they could not but because Americans placed so much faith in their senses they often ended up taking as truth things they could not comprehend.

Enlightenment thinkers had envisioned a future with many new inventions but none anticipated the commercial significance they would have and how these inventions wouldn’t be the result of learned gentlemen applying their knowledge but rather middling sorts trying to solve business problems.

Grain grinding machines which led to automated flower mills, steam engines, turning lathes that produced irregular wooden shapes, etc. were all inventions of this era by middling sorts.

Many members of the Revolutionary elite with republican views were initially opposed to studying “dead languages” like Greek or Latin as improper but as American culture became more vulgar many of these individuals became concerned similar to Federalists.

Benjamin Rush, as an example, believed that while education was important a liberal college education shouldn’t be available to all and that tuitions should be higher to make it so ordinary Americans wouldn’t be able to attend.

By 1815 there was no turning back the influence of the middling sorts and they were responsible for creating a sense of national identity.

The middling sorts used their experience in the new commercial focused society to create the myth of the American dream.

The new was created by Northern Republicans but came to be embraced by the entire country with Southern practices and identity being viewed as regional.

Most Southerners were not slaveholders and most valued hard work as much as any Northerner but there were fewer institutions in the South that catered to the middling sorts like newspapers, towns, and schools so the Southern elite were able to control the culture and politics to a greater extent.

Because they were able to control the culture and politics Southern elites didn’t fear republicanism the way the Federalist elites in the North did.

With opposition to slavery growing in the North the South had to find more elaborate justifications for their “peculiar institution” with many younger planters even arguing that civilization depended on slavery.

While the South, and especially Virginia, had been the main force in creating the new nation in 1789 and had continued to dominate national politics up to 1815 many Southerners realized that the North was growing rapidly and the dynamic nature of Northern culture was marginalizing the South.

By 1815 Americans had fully disassociated themselves from Europe and with the European monarchies creating a Holy Alliance against liberalism Americans turned inwards viewing their experiment in republicanism as more important than ever but many had fears over America’s future.

Not long after the War of 1812 crisis broke out over the question of admitting Missouri as a slave state with Northerners realizing slavery wasn’t going to naturally die and Southerners realizing the seriousness of the North’s desire to see slavery end.

Jefferson had strong views on the Missouri crisis stating it wasn’t a moral question but a question of power.

He was wrong and the irony is that no one had done more to create the egalitarian society that viewed slavery with disgust.