W. W. Norton & Company | Inventing America, 2 ed.

Chapter 6: Inventing the American Republic: The States (1776-1790)

Chapter Outline

The Science of Government
1. Scientific Societies
  1. American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia (1768)
  2. American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston (1780)
2. State Constitutions (1776-80)
  1. Pennsylvania model
    1. Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776)
    2. republican government based on popular choice
    3. "unbalanced" government
    4. early state constitutions: Virginia, Pennsylvania
  2. Massachusetts model
    1. John Adams's Thoughts on Government (1776)
    2. elected governor and bicameral assembly, appointive judiciary
    3. "balanced government"
    4. later state constitutions: New York, Massachusetts
  3. Mixed government
    1. king, Lords, and Commons
    2. property qualifications
    3. rejected as undemocratic
  4. Separation of functions
    1. legislative, executive, and judicial branches
    2. checks and balances
  5. Authority
    1. written constitutions
    2. fundamental law
    3. elected constitutional conventions
    4. ratification by the people
  6. Declarations of rights
    1. English Bill of Rights
    2. state bills of rights
    3. George Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights
  7. Religious freedom
    1. established religions
    2. religious toleration (privilege)
    3. separation of church and state
    4. Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom (1786)
Republican Society
1. The Meaning of Republican Equality
  1. Widespread property ownership
  2. Opportunity
  3. Upward mobility
  4. Interest-based representation
  5. Popular education
  6. Informed citizenry
2. The First Emancipation
  1. Revolutionary assault on slavery
    1. restrictions on international slave trade
    2. gradual emancipation in northern states (1780-1804)
  2. Fugitive slaves
  3. Decline of white indentured servitude and apprenticeship
  4. Rise of wage labor
  5. "Colonization," or deportation, of former slaves
  6. Growth of the free black community
  7. Attacks on scientific racism
3. Women
  1. "Weaker sex" tradition of sexism
  2. Abigail Adams's plea to her husband, John, to "remember the ladies"
  3. Judith Sargeant Murray's "On the Equality of the Sexes" (1790)
  4. Rise of "republican motherhood"
  5. Emergence of "female academies"
4. Arts and Sciences
  1. Writers: Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Philip Freneau
  2. Painters: John Singleton Copley, Benjamin West, Charles Willson Peale
  3. Scientists: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse
Economic Adversity and Innovation
1. Economic Adversity
  1. Wartime restrictions on American commerce
  2. Paper money
  3. Postwar imports
  4. Bankruptcies
2. Innovations
  1. Shift from tobacco to wheat in the Chesapeake region
  2. Companies
    1. transportation: roads and canals
    2. George Washington and the Potowmack Company
    3. trade: China and India
    4. land speculation
  3. Manufacturing
    1. English Industrial Revolution
    2. textiles
      1. spinning jennies
      2. carding machines
    3. "state models"
    4. Moses Brown and Samuel Slater
3. Patents and Copyright
4. Invention of the American Corporation
  1. State-granted act of charter of incorporation
  2. Originally nonprofit institutions
  3. City charters
  4. Profit-making corporations
    1. large-scale
    2. capital-intensive
  5. Banks, including the Bank of North America
  6. America as an organizational society

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