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

Chapter 9

“The Jeffersonian Revolution and all that it meant socially and culturally were driven by the same dynamic forces that had been at work since at least the middle of the eighteenth century” (315).

The most important aspects were population growth and population movement:

Nearly 5.3mm people (a fifth were black slaves) lived in the U.S. in 1800 and while population growth began to decline after 1800 it still grew very fast doubling every 20 years.

It was also a very young population with 36% of the white population being under 10 years old in 1810 and 70% being under 25 years old.

Western states and western lands of existing states grew rapidly in this time.

Tennessee became a state in 1796 and its population multiplied by ten between 1790 and 1820.

Major Midwest cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Detroit, Cincinnati, Lexington, Nashville, and Louisville had all mostly formed by 1800.

Ohio settlement expanded after the Treaty of Grenville in 1795, the territory became a state in 1803 and by 1820 was the fifth-largest state with over a half a million people.

While America was growing rapidly it wasn’t developing socially and culturally the way many Federalists had hoped into a European fiscal-military state.

The majority of Americans still worked in agriculture and traditional social hierarchies couldn’t form due to Americans having so much land at their disposal to expand into.

Americans had always been more at odds with authority than Englishmen (who were considered the most liberty-minded people in Europe by other Europeans) and the Revolution only cemented this with many Americans challenging authority, hierarchy, and social distinctions.

While most Americans were still tied to the land they were involved in trade and commerce and the development of a market economy was taking shape especially in Nee England due to more productive agricultural labor.

To many observers, especially Federalists and foreigners, Americans were growing more vulgar.

This was especially true in the south where duels, gambling and cockfighting were being used as ways for Southerners to express their ambition.

The new cultural norms were even more prevalent in the West where specific types of fighting, such as gouging out an opponents eyes, became common.

In the country, but especially the North, ambition and getting ahead financially was how this new culture expressed itself.

More and more people took part in economic activities to make money, county fairs became popular for neighbors to show off their domestic manufacturing, livestock and produce, and even schooling changed as educators used students’ ambitions to encourage them to emulate those who were doing better academically.

No longer were things like agricultural improvements to be found by listening to learned, scientific gentlemen. They would be found by emulating their neighbors and trying to outdo them.

Personal, not just political violence was also common and on the rise in this era.

Murder rates in Pennsylvania were twice that of London in second half of 18th century; following the Revolution murder rates increased in the Chesapeake region and backcountry of the South after having declined for a century; murder and suicide rates were rising in New York City as well.

Americans sensed that civility was in decline with horrific tales of frontier violence between settlers and Indians; newspapers publishing stories of violence also helped spread a fear of society becoming less civil.

Urban rioting became more common and more destructive as well as earlier 18th century mobs usually made up of individuals from a variety of classes and backgrounds by the 19th century they were made up of lower sorts fueled by class resentment who had no ties to local elites or a social hierarchy.

One common explanation for all the violence was the rising rates of alcohol consumption.

By 1820 Americans were consuming almost five gallons of distilled spirits per person per year up from two and a half in 1790.

All age groups (including children) men and women, and all classes of people drank distilled spirits but especially the lower sorts.

Other social criticisms regarding the violence and social disorder of the era was the breakdown of the household with large movements of people it was difficult for one family to feel a connection to another; young Americans asserted independence from their parents by choosing their own partners and courtships; norms of sexual behavior had relaxed; and older citizens were no longer deferred to just because of their age.

Other areas of society where norms were breaking down were in colleges and in any relationships where white males had previously accepted servitude/dependence on another.

Students at colleges protested faculty and administration decisions and didn’t hesitate to resort to rebellion to that authority and violence.

Americans who were servants, with republican notions of equality and liberty after the Revolution, could not accept their status as lesser than their social betters and often made demands of their masters that would have been unheard of in earlier eras such as demanding to sit at the same table as their masters and mistresses for meals.

This problem was more unique to the North as Southerners could rely on slave labor and did not require hired servants for much.

“By the early nineteenth century much of what remained of traditional eighteenth-century hierarchy was in shambles—broken by social and economic changes and justified by the republican commitment to equality” (347-348).

Apprentices stopped becoming dependent on families for training employment and became more like employees and masters became more like employers.

Artisans stopped focusing on made-to-order work and started focusing on ready-made goods for mass production and delivery to markets they weren’t tied to personally.

Cash payments became used for wages instead of the traditional paternalistic relationship between masters and journeymen.

Masters and journeymen spoke of how their interests were aligned and that both their interests were that of their craft but as time went on this traditional view was challenged as journeymen in an industry came to realize their interests were different than those of their employers and were more similar to laborers in entirely different industries.

Strikes were present in the eighteenth century but they were carried out by a craft against a whole community to change things such as communal restrictions on their goods but by the late eighteenth and nineteenth century strikes were carried out by employees against employers for better wages, working conditions, etc.

This process wasn’t instant and took a few decades and it wasn’t until the third decade of the 19th century that employees and employers were clearly split along more modern class divisions.

The common theme for the middling sorts was that they had to work for a living and they viewed those who were able to make a living off of others, without laboring themselves, as less republican.

The developing market economy was championed by the middle sorts in the North, Northern Republicans, as it helped them get ahead and was opposed by Federalists who viewed the traditional order as a benefit to them.

For Southern Republicans who were slaveholders the disdain Republicans had for those who were able to make a living without laboring themselves put them in an awkward position as they tried to pass themselves off as not dissimilar from their Northern counterparts.