Creating Republican Governments, 1776–1790

This is Unit Seven, covering seventeen seventy-six to seventeen ninety — the years in which the men who had won a war sat down to write governments. Unit Six ended with a claim to test: that the Revolution largely reinforced a racial identity based on skin colour. This unit is where that claim meets documents, and the documents answer it. One more thing to carry. The word republic in this period does not mean democracy, and the framers say so themselves, in print, as an argument for their own Constitution. Watch for it. By the end you will be able to distinguish republicanism from democracy as they used the words. You will be able to state what the Revolution did and did not change for women and for enslaved people. You will be able to explain why the Articles could not be amended. You will be able to give the origin of the three-fifths formula. And you will be able to state how narrow ratification actually was.

Start with the vocabulary, because two words that sound alike are doing very different work here.

What a republic meant, and how unusual it was.

USH1 0901 What a Republic Was

A republic is a state without a king, and in eighteenth-century Europe they were few — the course names only Genoa, Venice and the Dutch Republic. Leaders looked to Rome, where citizens appointed the leaders who represented them, adopting the form despite European scepticism about whether republics could stay stable.

And the distinction, in Madison's own sentence.

USH1 0902 Republicanism Is Not Democracy

Madison wrote that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention, incompatible with personal security or the rights of property. Conservative Whigs opposed democracy fearing majority rule would threaten property; radical Whigs favoured broader participation. Who should rule was genuinely open.

How they proposed to measure fitness to rule.

USH1 0903 Virtue, and Property as Its Proxy

Republican theory held that if the people are virtuous the republic survives and if they become corrupt it falls. Leaders measured virtue by property ownership, holding that property holders had the greatest stake in society, which limited political rights to property holders and carried colonial deference into the republic.

The performance that made the theory credible.

USH1 0904 Washington as Cincinnatus

Washington embodied republican virtue by refusing kingship and retiring to Mount Vernon, on the model of Cincinnatus. The Society of the Cincinnati, founded seventeen eighty-three, took as its motto that he relinquished everything to save the Republic.

And the course's own answer to how much actually changed.

USH1 0905 How Much Revolutionary Change

The course answers directly: less than the rhetoric promised. Traditional ideas and categories of race and gender, order and decorum remained firmly entrenched — a revolution that changed who governed without changing who counted.

Four entries on women, and the pattern is consistent: something genuinely opens, and the thing underneath it does not move.

The new role, and how it was justified.

USH1 0906 Women and Republican Motherhood

Republican motherhood positioned women as responsible for instilling civic virtue in children, and educational opportunity expanded to support it, with Benjamin Rush promoting girls' education as essential to the republic's survival. The role was an enlargement and a containment at once, justified by usefulness to sons.

And the legal structure that did not change.

USH1 0907 Coverture Remained

Coverture remained in force. Married women had no independent legal or economic status, could not conduct business or own property independently, and husbands controlled property wives brought to marriage. The course is specific that the disability survived the Revolution intact.

One request, and the reply.

USH1 0908 Remember the Ladies

Abigail Adams wrote to John in seventeen seventy-six asking that in the new code of laws he remember the ladies, and not give husbands unlimited power. John dismissed it as laughable, replying that they knew better than to repeal their masculine systems. The request was made, recorded and refused.

Two writers, and one who went further than the doctrine allowed.

USH1 0909 Warren and Murray

Mercy Otis Warren published anti-British works before seventeen seventy-five and a three-volume history in eighteen twelve. Judith Sargent Murray argued that God had made the minds of women and men equal, and that women's education should enable economic independence — which goes past republican motherhood.

Now the same test applied to slavery, where real change happened and stopped well short of the language of seventeen seventy-six.

The societies, and what their work reveals.

USH1 0910 Manumission and Its Limits

Abolitionist sentiment produced private manumissions and organised societies, with Virginia slaveholders freeing about ten thousand people. The New York Manumission Society educated Black children and protected free Black people from kidnapping, which indicates what freedom did not secure.

How gradual the northern emancipation actually was.

USH1 0911 Gradual Emancipation in the North

Massachusetts' seventeen eighty constitution technically freed all enslaved people, yet several hundred remained enslaved, and about eleven hundred were still enslaved in New England by eighteen hundred. Over thirty-six thousand remained enslaved across the northern states, the last emancipated in the late eighteen twenties.

The contradiction the course puts at the centre of this.

USH1 0912 Jefferson's Contradiction

Jefferson enslaved over one hundred people and freed only a few, and historical consensus is that he forced Sally Hemings into a long-term sexual relationship. His Notes proposed to end slavery while removing Black people from Virginia entirely. He wrote that religion had produced a Phillis Wheatley but could not produce a poet.

And the woman he was dismissing.

USH1 0913 Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley was manumitted in seventeen seventy-three at twenty-one, and published poetry that circulated on both sides of the Atlantic, including the line that it was mercy brought her from her pagan land. The course places her beside Jefferson's dismissal, and the pairing is the point.

Two more tests of the same kind — one about land, one about conscience — before we get to the governments themselves.

What the peace treaty said about the people already there.

USH1 0914 The Treaty of Paris Was Silent

The Treaty of Paris was silent on Native lands. British territory east of the Mississippi and south of the Great Lakes passed to the republic, and much of it remained under the actual control of Native peoples. The course states the treaty did not address them at all.

What followed in the territory that transfer described.

USH1 0915 The Middle Ground and the Northwest Indian War

The middle ground became a battle zone no one group controlled. Brant formed a Western Confederacy and the Northwest Indian War ran from seventeen eighty-five to ninety-five. Americans massacred ninety-six Christian Delawares in seventeen eighty-two, most of them women and children. Greenville gave the United States dominion over Ohio.

And the partial settlement of religion.

USH1 0916 Religion and the State

Virginia's Statute for Religious Freedom of seventeen eighty-six ended the Church of England's privileged status, and Pennsylvania removed in seventeen ninety the religious test that had barred Jews from legislative office. Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire still required public support of Christian churches.

Now the first national government, and the arithmetic that doomed it.

What the Articles created, and what they left out.

USH1 0917 The Articles of Confederation

The Articles were prepared in June seventeen seventy-six and approved in seventeen eighty-one, creating a league of friendship between states rather than a federal government, with a unicameral legislature whose members were selected by state legislatures. There was no president, no executive, and no national judiciary.

And why it could not be repaired.

USH1 0918 Why the Articles Failed

Any measure required nine states, and amendment required all thirteen. Congress had no power to tax, states supplied less than half the funding requested, and nationalists pushed a five percent import tax that Rhode Island alone rejected. A government needing thirteen of thirteen to change anything cannot change anything.

Meanwhile the states were running experiments in opposite directions.

USH1 0919 The State Constitutions

Pennsylvania eliminated property requirements and both the executive and the upper house. Maryland required five thousand pounds of personal property to be governor, excluding over ninety percent of White males from office. Adams called Pennsylvania's constitution so democratical that it must produce confusion and every evil work.

Two things the confederation did well, and then the rising that convinced propertied men it was failing.

The survey system, whose result you can still see.

USH1 0920 The Land Ordinances

The seventeen eighty-five ordinance divided land into townships of six square miles, subdivided into thirty-six plots of six hundred forty acres, sold at auction — a grid still visible from the air across much of the western United States. Jefferson's earlier ordinance established that new states would enter with equal standing.

And the ordinance that mattered for the bargain to come.

USH1 0921 The Northwest Ordinance

The Northwest Ordinance of seventeen eighty-seven created the Northwest Territory and prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River, with a territory eligible for its own legislature at five thousand free adult settlers and statehood at sixty thousand. This prohibition is what northern delegates accepted the three-fifths deal against.

The rising, and who was actually in it.

USH1 0922 Shays' Rebellion

Western Massachusetts farmers faced high taxes and debts they could not pay in worthless paper, and many were veterans facing loss of their homes. Citizens took up arms in seventeen eighty-six and closed courthouses to prevent foreclosure. Daniel Shays of Pelham was one of many former Continental officers.

And how the state answered.

USH1 0923 Bowdoin's Private Army

Governor Bowdoin raised a private army of forty-four hundred men, funded by wealthy Boston merchants, without the approval of the legislature. Officials could use deadly force without fear of prosecution, and militiamen who refused to serve would be executed. Eighteen died overall.

What propertied men concluded from it.

USH1 0924 What Shays' Rebellion Convinced Them Of

To men of property, mostly conservative Whigs, the rising strongly suggested the republic was falling into anarchy and chaos, and twelve other states faced similar difficulties, which made it look like a democratic impulse driving the population. It convinced Washington to come out of retirement.

Four entries on Philadelphia, and the last of them is the one this unit exists to teach.

What the delegates were sent to do, and what they did.

USH1 0925 The Convention Met to Amend the Articles

Fifty-five delegates met at Philadelphia in May seventeen eighty-seven, in secret, with only Madison's notes documenting proceedings, and Rhode Island refused to send anyone. The stated purpose was to amend the Articles, and delegates quickly decided to create an entirely new framework. Two New York delegates departed over it.

The two rival plans.

USH1 0926 The Virginia and New Jersey Plans

Madison's Virginia Plan proposed a strong national government able to overturn state legislation, with both houses apportioned by population. Paterson's New Jersey Plan gave equal votes to all states in a unicameral legislature. Proportional representation would let populous states dominate and ensure their interests, including slavery, would be safe.

And the settlement between them.

USH1 0927 The Great Compromise

Roger Sherman proposed a Senate of two per state chosen by state legislatures, and a House proportional to population — small states equal in one chamber, large states advantaged in the other. Senators were chosen by legislatures, not voters, and direct election required the Seventeenth Amendment.

And the compromise that has to be understood in the right order.

USH1 0928 The Slavery Compromises

The three-fifths formula was not invented at the Convention. A seventeen eighty-three Confederation Congress amendment counted enslaved populations at three-fifths for taxation, giving slaveholders tax relief, and delegates adopted the identical formula in seventeen eighty-seven. A formula built to reduce what slaveholders owed now increased what they controlled.

Two entries to close, on what the framework deliberately restrained and how narrowly it passed.

The safeguards, and what the framers said about them.

USH1 0929 The Checks on Democracy

Many delegates held serious reservations about democracy, which they believed promoted anarchy. The Electoral College was designed partly as a safeguard, and senators were chosen by legislatures. Hamilton told New York's ratifying convention that the ancient democracies never possessed one feature of good government.

And the vote itself.

USH1 0930 Ratification, and How Narrow It Was

When the draft became public in September seventeen eighty-seven opinions were deeply divided, and the course says most people were opposed. New York ratified thirty to twenty-seven, Virginia eighty-nine to seventy-nine, Rhode Island thirty-four to thirty-two. In total, fewer than two thousand men voted on whether to adopt it.

Look at what you can now do. You can distinguish republicanism from democracy the way the framers did, with Madison calling democracies spectacles of turbulence and Hamilton calling them ungovernable mobs — in print, arguing for this Constitution. You can state what changed and what did not: republican motherhood opening education while coverture stayed intact, Abigail Adams asking and being refused, ten thousand manumitted in Virginia while thirty-six thousand remained enslaved in the North. You can explain the Articles' arithmetic, where one state out of thirteen could sink a tax the other twelve wanted. You can give the three-fifths formula's real origin, as a tax measure that reduced what slaveholders owed, reused four years later to increase what they controlled. And you can say how narrow it was: fewer than two thousand men voted on the whole thing.