Pedro Rodriguez Br. H.

Baker AP American History Period 4 24 September 2013 Key Points from Bennett and Davis Readings
The newly independent nation struggles to shape a durable form of government that maximizes every citizens liberty and protects their unalienable rights. Many of the leaders of the Revolution began to see difficulties ahead for the infant United States as the Congress repeatedly failed to meet its financial obligations. The Articles of Confederation had been drafted in 1777, had not been ratified until four long, war-filled years later, in 1781. The primary purpose of the Confederation government was the successful prosecution of the War of Independence. Congress, under the Articles, had power to wage war, conduct foreign affairs, borrow money, deal with the Indians, and settle disputes among the states. Each state was represented in Congress. A number of states claimed vast tracts beyond the Appalachians. After independence and peace, the greatest achievement of the Confederation government was the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The Northwest Ordinance continued Congresss plan to treat each new territory as a state-in-embryo. Originally introduced in 1779 by Thomas Jefferson, the Virginia statute had failed to win majority support in wartime Virginia. Patrick Henry introduced a bill in 1785 to provide state support for Teachers of the Christian Religion. So successful in Madisons argument that many of the Christian denominations saw the force of his reason and

petitioned the Virginia Assembly to vote down the Henry bill. Despite these advances for civil and religious liberty, the financial situation of the new United States was spinning out of control. The Union also showed signs of coming unglued over foreign affairs under the Confederation. Strains on the Union continued to grow. Revolutionary War veteran Captain Daniel Shays led an army of desperate farmers who tried to close down the courts to prevent foreclosures and imprisonment for debt. Shayss Rebellion alarmed most of the responsible leaders of the Revolution. Madison had already begun his active cooperation with Alexander Hamilton the previous September at the Annapolis Convention. Madisons immediate concern in the upcoming convention in Philadelphia was whether General George Washington would attend. Washington fully supported Madison and Hamiltons efforts, but he hesitated about whether he could go. The Peace of Paris, negotiated for the United States by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay, was formally signed on February 3, 1783. At the same time, England signed treaties with Americas allies, France, Spain, and the Netherlands. The United States now meant everything from the Atlantic west to the Mississippi River, save New Orleans and the Floridas. This area was ceded by England back to Spain as part of New Spain, the massive empire that now stretched from South America north, well into coastal California, and including much of the American southwest, east to the Florida peninsula. During the eight years of the American Revolution, there had been more than 1,300 land and sea battles. American losses have been calculated conservatively at 25,324.

The victory also left America with a considerable foreign debt. In a report to Congress several years later, Alexander Hamilton would place this debt at $11,710,379 (in addition to domestic and state debts totaling more than $65 million). This enormous debt was just one of the problems that would threaten the new nation in its first years of independence. When George Washington had taken command, he told recruiters not to enlist any more Africans. Fearful of a slave insurrection, southerners in Congress balked at the idea of arming and training blacks. But when the armys numbers started to thin, Washington reversed himself and asked Congress to resolve the issue. The Congress voted to allow any black to reenlist if he had already served.

After the shooting stopped, the United States of America was recognized by the worlds major powers as independent. But this gangling new child was an ugly duckling among nations, a loose collection of states under the Articles of Confederation, not yet a completely sovereign nation. But during the next seventy-odd years, powered by dynamic forces, America would expand swiftly and aggressively. However, in that expansion, and in the way in which the new nation formed itself, the seeds of the next great American crisis were being sown. Besides independence, the end of the war had brought economic chaos to America. As with most wars, the Revolution had been good for business. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress had no power to tax. In the thirteen states, where power was centered, the separate currencies had created an economic shambles.

While the situation was bad almost everywhere, in Massachusetts, the home of the Adamses and birthplace of the patriot cause, the economic dislocation boiled over into bloodshed between Americans Like the prewar Bacons Rebellion, the Regulator Movement in the Carolinas, and the Paxton Boys of Pennsylvania, this little rebellion, as Thomas Jefferson would call it, was a sign of serious class conflict, a symptom of the economic tension that had always existed in America between, on one side, the workingclass frontier farmers, inner-city laborers, the servant class, smaller merchants, and free blacks, and on the other side the haves, the landed, slaveholding gentry, and the international merchants of the larger cities. Massachusetts passed a state constitution in 1780 that found few friends among the poor and middle class, many of them veterans of the Continental Army still waiting for promised bonuses. In the summer of 1786, an army veteran named Daniel Shays emerged on the scene. With 700 farmers and working-class people, Shays marched on Springfield and paraded around town. Shays soon had a thousand men under arms and was marching on Boston, the seat of wealth and power. Then General Benjamin Lincoln, one of Washingtons war commanders, brought out an army paid for by Bostons merchants. Lacking cohesion and stronger leadership, the Shaysites disintegrated. However, several of the reforms they had demanded were made, including the end of the states direct taxation, reduced court costs, and the exemption of workmens tools and household necessities from the debt process.

A Virginia statesman who wrote the first American bill of rights the Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776George Mason (172592) is not usually mentioned in the same breath with the more familiar Founding Fathers. Before the Revolution, his most important contribution was the Virginia Declaration of Rights, from which Jefferson borrowed to craft the Declaration of Independence. Mason played an active role in creating the Constitution, but disagreed with parts of it and refused to sign the final draft of the United States Constitution.