hey folks welcome back to history 1301 today we are doing chapter 8 which is about securing the Republic 1791 to 1815 so these are the first few years after America sort of has everything figured out under the Constitution how is America going to implement this document and and does it work so when George Washington became the first president of the United States in April of 1789 he was sworn in in New York City which was America's temporary capital city but America's political leaders believed that the Republican experiment of the United States of America's success depended on continuous political Harmony more than anything else they wanted to avoid organized political parties which were at the time seen as divisive and disruptive but parties ended up forming pretty quickly first they formed in Congress and then they spread throughout the rest of the nation so the 1790s was ultimately a decade of really intense partisanship a so-called age of passion in which the survival of the Republic the revolutions Legacy and American Liberty seemed to be at stake now right away the government urgently needed access to money to begin paying off the massive amount of debt that the nation had acred during the Revolutionary War it also had to deal with unstable conditions out in the western territories ultimately President George Washington would have to ins Inspire popular support for the new nation and its government if it was going to survive and the American people that President Washington was now to Pride over were hardly one unified American people geographical features including climate and access to markets further divided the people who were already grouped into different factions according to race sex class nation of ethnic origin and religion and by regions and sections of the nation as well President Washington embodied National unity and the virtue of Republican self-sacrifice since having allegedly completely retired from public life after the end of the Revolutionary War ended he ended up being dragged out of retirement for the first time and back into public life to be America's very first President Washington was allowed to choose his vice president and he chose John Adams who was a very important political leader from the revolutionary era as well one of the first things that Congress had to do was decide how their President should be addressed in conversation a debate over whether or not he should be called Mr President or your majesty or your honor lasted for over a month but ultimately George Washington chose to be addressed as Mr President he was intent on surrounding the Office of the President with an aura of intense respectability in the summer of 1789 as well Congress then authorized the very first executive level departments first we have the state department which is meant for foreign affairs and Thomas Jefferson was chosen as the first Secretary of State there's also the treasury Department for managing the nation's finances that is going to be headed up by Alexander Hamilton and then finally we have the war department which was meant for the nation's defense the heads of these various departments could be appointed but also dismissed or fired by the president thereby tying these department heads directly to the president eventually these department heads are going to evolve into what we nowadays know as the presidential cabinet Congress next attended to the creation of a new federal Judiciary System now the Constitution called for there to be one supreme court at the very top of the Judiciary but left it up to Congress to authorize any lower federal court structure President Washington formed the very first supreme court and chose John Jay one of the authors of the Federalist Papers as the very first Chief Justice of the American Supreme Court but it was a financial plan proposed by Alexander Hamilton that ended up being one of the first nasty disagreements to seriously Fray National Unity taking Great Britain as his model Alexander Hamilton came up with a plan to try to stabilize America's finances to Garner the support of powerful financiers whether they were here in America or abroad and really hope to Foster more economic development in the new nation Alexander Hamilton's number one dream his ultimate goal was to make the United States into a worldwide military and ultimately a worldwide commercial power someday he wanted America to become very wealthy so to establish the American government's creditworthiness Alexander Hamilton proposed at first that the government pay off at full face value all remaining National and state level debts left over from the time of the Revolutionary War the reason why he wanted to do this was to create a new level of national debt which would be issued as interest bearing bonds to government creditors who wanted to help the nation out this idea would ultimately tie wealthy American investors to the stability of the national government because if wealthy people bought these government bonds then they would definitely have a serious economic interest in making sure that they did everything they possibly could to make sure that the American government was able to thrive in the future if the American government ended up lasting those investors stood to make a great deal of money if those interest bearing Bonds were ever paid off and Hamilton also wanted to establish an official Bank of the United States which would be modeled directly on the bank of England that would hopefully Act as the nation's sole Financial agent the bank of the United States would be a private corporation that would hold on to American government funds it would make loans to the government and also as a private business it would make profits for the company's individual private stockholders Hamilton at first proposed to allow the bank of the United States to print and issue money in the form of paper Bank notes that would then be backed up by a small National reserve of gold and silver and he also wanted to promote the security of those government bonds that he wanted to sell to wealthy investors Hamilton also called for a massive diversification of the American economy in an effort to try to promote more Manufacturing in the United States in the future he also advocated Aid in the form of protective tariffs High tariffs tariffs are basically import taxes and having high tariff rates would make imported goods goods from other countries a little bit more expensive to buy than ones that were made in America and he wanted protective tariffs to be issued for Industries such as iron steel and things like clothing and shoe making which were already fairly well established at this time and he wanted to offer direct government subsidies to help out with the startup costs for other Industries to eventually develop factories that would produce Goods in the United States that at the time still had to be imported from foreign countries but above all most of most of all above everything else Alexander Hamilton wanted America to someday become an economic Powerhouse and he felt that would happen if he was able to promote manufacturing right from the very start of the American Nation uh manufacturing at this time refers to the making of finished products Goods by using labor Machinery tools and so on that will they be then be sold in both foreign and domestic markets in America so to raise immediate Revenue to get the federal government started up Hamilton proposed Gathering a tax on the distilling process of whiskey in America um also just to explain the image on this slide shows a picture of the neoc classical design of the First Bank of the United States which was built in Philadelphia as it appeared back in the 1790s Alexander Hamilton specifically designed this bank as a Roman or greek temple and he thought this would be a fitting expression of the Grandeur of his vision for a National Bank and for an American Nation wealthy Americans American financiers existing manufacturers and wealthy merchants generally supported Hamilton's vision of the nation as a powerful commercial Republic but unfortunately many others in America had their own pretty different Visions for the United States in the future but Revenue bottom line was the government's most pressing need nearly everyone in America agreed that the government's Chief source of income should be based off of a tariff or a tax on imported goods that were entering into American ports to be sold the debate over this tarff how much should it be charged who should it be charged against ended up causing some immediate sectional divisions in the US manufacturers for example who were most highly concentrated in the northern section of the nation one wanted to keep very high tariff rates in order to protect themselves and their businesses against foreign competition but down in the southern regions of the new United States of America farmers and plantation owners very much wanted very low tariff rates and in an effort to keep down the costs of the goods that they needed to purchase from abroad just to keep their plantations and Farms running American manufacturing it should be pointed out was not yet to the point of making a lot of the Machinery that southern plantation owners and Farmers used at the time and so the only places to buy some of the supplies that Southerners absolutely needed to keep their plantations functioning were only made overseas and so Southerners felt that Alexander Hamilton's program of taxing all imported products would ultimately end up harming them disproportionately because farmers and plantation owners had no other choice but to buy all of the things that they needed to do business from foreign suppliers and pay the uh what they called unfair import taxes while Northerners didn't really have to face this particular tax or hardship Hamilton's plans for maintaining very close ties with Great Britain especially so soon after the end of the Revolutionary War was another thing that alarmed people particularly folks like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who specifically looked not back across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe but instead to the West towards future Westward Expansion as the thing that would assure a prosperous Republican future for The American Nation Hamilton and Jeff or sorry Jefferson and Madison didn't want to look backwards at where America had been they didn't want to look backwards to Europe back to the east they wanted to look forward into the Western frontier for America's future people like Madison and Jefferson also very much disliked the idea of the growth of cities and they also didn't really agree % that America should be a mostly manufacturing nation and they didn't want an economic policy put in place that would cater mostly to wealthy bankers and Business Leaders they instead hoped that America would someday be a republic filled to the brim with independent small farmers who were able to sell their goods to the worldwide Market through the offices of a free trade system Jefferson and Madison ultimately feared that too powerful of a centralized government if it ever in the future ended up allying itself with a growing class of wealthy commercial capitalists that that would ultimately endanger the idea of American freedom for everyone and initial opposition to Hamilton's program mostly came from the south which again lacked individual debt investors and owners of government bonds where support for manufacturing and a very Diversified economy was weak and whose States had already paid off much of their leftover wartime debt to argue against Southerners claims that Hamilton was basically overstepping his power with this economic proposal Hamilton himself actually argued that the Constitution's clause which gave congress the power to enact laws for the so-called General Welfare of the United States technically if you read it closely enough did authorize his plans he was allowed to do this according to his understanding of the Constitution but at this point things turned into an argument over semantics over the wording in the Constitution and this is going to have massive implications for the future especially for future interpretation of the document of the Constitution and immediately Alexander Hamilton's opponents who came to be known as strict constructionists argued that the federal government could and should only use powers that were explicitly spelled out word for word very clearly in the document of the Constitution these strict constructionists argued that there was no spot in the wording of the Constitution that said anything about Congress having the power to authorize or create a national bank and the debate over this financial plan immediately became fierce but ultimately a compromise was eventually reached which did end up securing Alexander Hamilton's financial program except he gave up on asking for any sort of government subsidies to try to promote manufacturing and build factories all of this was done in exchange the southerners agreed to the rest of Alexander Hamilton's financial plan with that one change in exchange for locating the American nation's new permanent Capital City nestled Right Between the States of Virginia and Maryland which by the way are two southern slave owning States this city eventually became what we know now nowadays as the city of Washington DC another thing that really tested the cohesiveness of The American Nation at this early point was the fact that the French Revolution actually kicked off in 1789 and that Revolution across the Atlantic Ocean ended up significantly deepening existing political divisions in the United States of America now at first when the French Revolution first kicked off in 1789 and 1790 almost all Americans celebrated the French Revolution they thought it was a good thing because the French Revolution at that time seemed like it had been inspired by their own American Revolution and subsequent American Republic but the revolution in France very quickly began to take a much darker and more bloody and violent turn than America's Revolution ever did starting particularly in the year 1793 in 1793 the French Revolution became much more violent and much more radical of a revolution which was marked at its peak perhaps by the execution the legal execution of King Louis the 16th his whole entire family and thousands upon thousands of others who were wealthy Aristocrats or people who sided with the monarchy during a period called the reign of terror so the reign of terror combined with the new revolutionary government that came to power in France which began initiating or picking Wars as soon as they came into Power with places like Great Britain and Prussia and Austria and other European nations that actually ended up really polarizing the American people on the one side the people who supported the French Revolution were typically people who followed after the Notions of Thomas Jefferson Jefferson had actually spent years in the nation of France during the American Revolutionary War as a diplomat trying to secure assistance from the French Nation for the United States's cause Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as as well as John Adams helped to secure France's support for the Revolutionary War so Thomas Jefferson and his particular followers actually thought that the French Revolution despite the fact that it did yes indeed get really extreme was ultimately in the end a victory for self-government all around the world but on the other side of the argument to people like President Washington and Alexander Hamilton and their followers who tended to be a bit more conservative and who wanted closer ties to the nation of Great Britain and not necessarily France in their minds the revolution in France was edging on absolute Anarchy an apocalyptic hellscape and they believed that the United States of America should actually start to befriend Great Britain and helped and help Britain with their new war against a radical incredible antagonistic fren Nation but since the time of the end of the American Revolution the United States of America had had agreed to be a permanent Ally of the nation of France now the problem here is that the American government made all of these arrangements with France with the Royal monarchical government of King Louis the 16th but that King was now dead murdered by his own people and a completely different government now ended up ruling France so the question was was the United States of America still indebted to this particular version of the nation of France well President Washington said no once the king of France was killed and once a new revolutionary government was put in place the United States didn't owe any allegiance to that particular version of France and at the same time that President Washington was making his position on the French Revolution known President Washington also tried to expel a French diplomat who was operating in America named Edmund Jan uh Jana's problem was he was trying to secretly and underhandedly recruit American ships to attack British vessels British ships out on the Open Seas at the same time though Great Britain actually started up their old trick of seizing American ships and kidnapping American Sailors and forcing them to work for the British Navy this was impressment if you'll remember so in 1793 President Washington declared officially that the United States of America would stay neutral in this new conflict between Great Britain and France and all of the other nations on the European continent essentially that the United States was not going to pick a side in the war between Britain and France now to illustrate just how nasty the violence and literal terrorism of the French reign of terror was the image on this slide actually depicts the story of the death of one of Marie Antoinette's closest friends the princess de Lal who was executed for the crime of refusing to swear that she hated the king and queen of France and ultimately she was torn apart literally beheaded and her body was ripped into pieces by an angry frenzied French mob but the princess's head was then put on a long Pike and paraded to the prison where Maria antoinet was being held in the streets celebrating revolutionaries threw drinks and bottles of wine at the severed head and since mariaan tette was jailed on the second or third floor of the prison the pike was just long enough to put on a maob puppet show right outside of Marie Antoinette's cell window the French citizens wanted to literally terrorize her while she was awaiting her own almost certain execution which actually did happen her head was cut off by the guillotine not long after this scene her young daughter who somehow did manage to survive the years of the reign of terror years later when things had calmed down recalled that her mother incessantly wept and sobbed for days on end after this event Louis the 16th himself was actually executed by guillotine on January 21st 19 or sorry 1793 Maria uinet though was guillotined a few months later on October 16th 1793 and in addition to those those two the king and the Queen the 10-year-old Arab parent the Doan to the French throne he was actually physically abused and neglected to the point that he died in prison over the course of two years after being assigned a dedicated prison abuser to watch over him in his cell in the year 1795 so you can just imagine how terrible life was in the very last days for the French royal family political iCal rivalry actually increased in the 1790s and eventually led to the establishment of two brand new political parties the Federalist Party and the Republican or sometimes it's called the Jeffersonian Republican party um this Republican party I must make it clear to you has no relation at all to the modern-day Republican party that we have here in the 2020s but partisanship Rose steadily over the course of the 1790s fueled mostly by party supporting newspapers and pamphlets that were printed and distributed All Over America both political parties actually claimed the language of true American Liberty and they both accused each other of conspiring to destroy that particular Liberty the Federalist Party was generally considered to be more conservative and at this point I want to make clear what I mean by conservative conservative means that these people wanted to conserve or protect things the way that they were and to rely on things the way they had worked in the past sometimes stubbornly as opposed to more liberal meaning open to trying new things even though that might mean that uh liberal parties sometimes recklessly try new things so of the two parties the Federalists were the most conservative Federalist Party supporters supported the Washington administration they very much favored Alexander Hamilton's economic program and wanted to maintain strong ties with Great Britain the people who supported the Federalist Party were usually well-to-do fairly wealthy merchants Farmers Lo lawyers and well-established political leaders especially in the northern part of the United States those folks tended to support the Federalist Party the Federalists were also generally pretty elitist and they saw Society overall as a fixed hierarchical system in which they expected that high-ranking powerful political office should only go to the wealthiest of people in the nation and those wealthy men expected immediate deference and acquiescence from so-called lesser usually meaning poorer and less powerful people the Federalists feared that the spirit of Liberty that had been generated by the American Revolution could easily get out of hand and degenerate into Anarchy like what was happening in France at the time and we'll talk about the other party the Jeffersonian Republicans on on the very next slide let me tell you just a little bit more about the Federalists and other problems before we get to that in early armed Uprising against the federal government that started with a group of Western Pennsylvania farmers and other Western settlers who openly resisted Alexander Hamilton's tax on Whiskey distillation fed in to some of these violent conspiracy theories amongst the well-to-do Federalist Party supporters in America who were very afraid that poor people in America would someday rise up against their government power and maybe even take away rich people's wealth the tax on distilling whiskey had always been very very unpopular with rural Frontier Western Farmers these Farmers felt that the whiskey tax taxed them in particular unfairly and heavily since many rural households out on the Frontiers actually distilled and made their own whiskey and now those Farmers would have to pay tax on their own personal consumption of what was otherwise homemade Goods they were making the whiskey for their own personal consumption yet they now had to pay taxes on it it was also pretty expensive to buy whiskey in an Open Marketplace you would then have to roll or somehow lug back a barrel of whiskey to your Frontier home which was sometimes miles and miles away from the closest shops so many Frontier families actually distilled their own whiskey at this time and when government Tax Collectors started showing up and tried to collect collect whiskey taxes from usually poor Frontier farmers who weren't really selling this whiskey for any profit who might just be making alcohol for their own personal consumption or for their own friends and family when they already had very little money to begin with they started to refuse to pay the whiskey taxes and furthermore armed themselves whenever whiskey Tax Collectors started to come around their area but Alexander Hamilton for one was bound and determined to enforce the whiskey tax and to ultimately assert the supremacy of national laws all over the country so when armed Frontier farmers in Pennsylvania in particular tried to physically prevent the collection of the whiskey tax in the year 1794 they cried out and invoked slogans from the Revolutionary age and spoke frequently about their own personal Liberty but President George Washington immediately dispatched troops to the region to suppress this Uprising as quickly as it popped up the rebels in Western Pennsylvania offered almost no resistance and went back home immediately when they were confronted with military action but the fact that the so-called Whiskey Rebellion happened the fact that the military had to be used to threaten these Backwoods Farmers into paying their basic taxes actually ended up reinforcing many Federalist Party supporters fears of a a more popular or open to more people style democracy still at Alexander Hamilton's insistence the Federalist Party had essentially made their point whenever the government's Authority was openly challenged the national government would not shy away from using military force in order to compel obedience from its people now let's talk a little bit about the Republican Party sometimes known as the Jeffersonian Republican party to distinguish it from the more modern iteration of the Republican party that we have now and to kind of directly reflect that this was a Party founded by Thomas Jefferson and his followers it was led by folks like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson of course and the Republicans seemed to embrace a much more popular style of Politics the Republicans were the more liberal of the two political parties they supported France in terms of international affairs and had a lot more faith in broadly Democratic self-government in this country Southern plantation owners ordinary Farmers from all around the country and city-based Artisans and craftsmen who sympathized with the French Revolution those were the people who supported this Republican Party Republicans believed that farmers were the most virtuous citizens of the land and therefore they felt that agriculture had to remain the economic Foundation of American Life as opposed to manufacturing like what Hamilton and the Federalist Party favored the Republicans were far more critical of Social and economic inequality in America and they were much more congenial to more broad Democratic participation by regular average ordinary American people than the Federalists were each party though believed that only itself was truly legitimate and representative of the American nation's interests the other part party was always deemed an illegitimate faction and the number one enemy of American Liberty and the revolution's principles the partisanship of the 1790s expanded the size of the public sphere in America and also the Democratic content of American Freedom it increased the number of regular citizens who started to attend political events and started to read newspapers regular ordinary men never before active in politics now started to write their own pamphlets and organize their own political meetings and these men included members of the so-called Democratic Republican societies which were inspired by the radical jacoban clubs of Paris during the French Revolution these groups were not political parties they were just sort of like political discussion groups and their members openly supported the French Revolution and praised both American style and French style Liberty members of the Federalist Party tended to view them as illegitimately trying to usurp the representative authority of the federal government President Washington actually dismissed them as what he called self-created societies but the Democratic Republican societies Justified their existence by claiming that the people had a right to debate political questions and to organize to try to influence government policy they believed that political Liberty in America inol involved more than just going to vote on Election Day and should actually include popular organizing and pressure tactics as well although the Democratic Republican societies didn't last very long they were eventually absorbed into the emerging Republican party which also found support amongst radical British immigrants who very much defended the continuing French Revolution people like Thomas Payne now Thomas Payne it should be noted by this point in history in the 1790s had been invited to participate in France's Revolution he moved from America to France he was made an honorary French Citizen and even was given a spot in the French government for a while um Thomas Payne is going to continue to publish his famously revolutionary pamphlets including one called the rights of man in which he explained the natural rights that he felt all people should have access to but when the reign of terror in the French Revolution began Thomas Payne actually found himself in jail and sentenced to death as part of one of many political purges that happened in France at the time but don't worry too much Thomas Payne ended up managing to survive the reign of terror and never had to climb the steps of the guillotine and live to fight and right another day the open-minded Democratic Spirit of the 1790s also really invigorated did a lot of discussion concerning women's rights in America now back over in Europe in England actually in 1792 the woman on this particular slide her name is Mary wall stonecraft Mary wall stonecraft published a pamphlet known as a Vindication of the rights of women which was a direct take on Thomas Payne's Rights of Man and the new revolutionary document which gave rights to French people known as the rights of man in this book this booklet of Vindication of the rights of women Mary wal stonecraft argued that rights should always be extended to women as well now while she did not directly challenge traditional assumed gender roles she did argue that women should have greater access to educations and should have some kind of role in the represent representative government of their Nations the expanding public sphere of the 1790s actually offered all kinds of new opportunities for American women to start participating in politics and a small but growing number of women began to publish political and literary writings in American newspapers one of these women a lady named Judith Sergeant Murray insisted that women should have completely equal access to education with men if women seemed to be somewhat intellectually inferior to men she argued it was simply because women had been denied the opportunity to learn Murray was also a very popular poet and she began to speak very publicly about equal opportunities for women in America in the future but unfortunately women's roles were still very much viewed in terms of their duties and obligations within the family and any rights that women were viewed as having flowed only from their roles as wives and mothers however over time women in America did begin to benefit from slightly less restricted divorce laws somewhat greater access to educational and business opportunities and a much higher moral status in American society in fact alone amongst all of the rest of the states New Jersey in its original state constitution technically allowed all inhabitants using non-gendered language all inhabitants who owned at least some level of property to vote now technically this allowed women in New Jersey who owned property and their own names to vote in that state until eventually someone pointed this out to the New Jersey state government and the vote was restricted to men only in the year 1808 women were still not considered part of the American Body politic at this time although women were absolutely counted in census and population counts that determined representation for each state in Congress and there's nothing in the Constitution which explicitly limited rights to men only that document and almost all American people at the time in the 1790s and early 1800s generally assumed that politics in America was meant to be an exclusively male sphere but back to politics in general for a little bit George Washington was reelected unanimously for a second term as president in the year 1792 but once that second term was over he decided to retire from public service and public life in 1796 stopping at the end of only two terms as president now this actually ended up setting a precedent from here on out that the presidency should be limited to a maximum of two terms per person though this does not become an official American law until 1951 when the 22nd amendment to the Constitution was ratified which officially limited people to two terms as president only only every single president that came into office after George Washington with one exception actually held to this two terms only precedent and it's during Washington's second term as president that party divisions got worse in his farewell address to the American people at the end of his second term President George Washington tried to warn the American people against the formation of political parties and partisanship and he also urged the American people to avoid Europe's style of power politics by refusing to embrace any future permanent alliances with any other Nation all of Europe by the way was at least in the year 1796 in the very earliest years of the Napoleonic era and the Napoleonic Wars which was a series of constant recurrent Warfare between Britain and France which was led by a new emperor named Napoleon Bon apart at the end of the French revolutionary era so Britain France and Spain and basically every other European nation from Portugal to Russia are going to be involved in constant Warfare in the early years of the 1800s until the year 185 Europe as a continent was essentially a quagmire of instability and violence and War and President George Washington did not want the United States of America to get pulled into that fry but despite president Washington's exhortation to the American people to avoid political parties and foreign alliances it seems like nobody really listened especially not to the part about forming political parties now up until this point the president of the United States had been unanimously chosen as George Washington and there was no opposition to Washington being president so this means that it was only with the election of 1796 that we are going to see the first contested presidential election in all of American history but something to note is that presidential elections ran very very differently at the very start of the American Nation essentially two people would be chosen to run for a particular political party one person would be running for the office of President and the other person would be running for the office of Vice President the Electoral College members would then get together during election time and write their top two choices for who they wanted to be president on a ballot or a piece of paper when all of those pieces of paper were collected together whichever candidate had the most votes in the Electoral College that person became president but that person's choice of Vice President did not automatically become the vice president the person who actually came in second place overall in the Electoral College vote that person became the vice president even even if it wasn't necessarily who the person who was chosen as president wanted as their vice president so in 1796 we have John Adams running together with a man named Thomas Pinkney of South Carolina who ran for the Federalist Party and on the Republican side we have Thomas Jefferson running for president and Aaron Burr from the state of New York running for vice president and this is where things get kind of muddled John Adams won the presidency by gaining the most Electoral College votes but Thomas Jefferson actually came in second place and received more votes than Thomas Pinkney did so Thomas Jefferson actually became John Adams's vice president now if you couldn't already tell Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were adamant political enemies they were total opposites but eventually they are going to learn to work together a little bit better and they will form what we might nowadays call a bit of a freny relationship now President John Adams was a brilliant lawyer and a very skilled and experienced politician but he was personally disliked by nearly everyone even those who voted for him apparently Adams had a really grumpy old man kind of personality and he did not take criticism even suggest suggestions that were helpful constructive criticism well and he hated the idea of nego NE iting which if you think about it is a real serious problem for a political leader so as a result of these personality flaws the Adams Administration is going to face constant crisis and they're not going to get much help from Congress during the years that Adams is in office so the first runner up in the presidential election now Vice President Thomas Jefferson and his Republican party they were very pro- France and after they lost the actual president election the nation of France began acting in a very hostile manner towards America now the French began seizing American ships that were carrying goods to be sold in Great Britain saying that this was simply a part of their war with Great Britain and that they had to stop All Ships and all boats that were trying to provide Aid or conduct trade with the British although the United States had years ago publicly announced that they were going to remain neutral in the war between France and Great Britain America still insisted on its right to trade with both of those nations in 1797 to try to calm things down though before they got out of hand President John Adams sent three unnamed Representatives he actually referred to them in code AS X Y and Z to keep their identities Anonymous and to prevent anyone from finding out what their true mission was he sent X Y and Z over to France and their job was to try to keep America out of out of the war and also try to make a trade deal with France and try to convince France to end their blockade of American Trade ships but the French foreign minister at this time seizing on what he perceived as a unique opportunity he actually demanded a massive bribe for himself from The American Nation before he would even agree to talk to the three American Representatives when President Adams heard about the demand for a bribe before even talking to his intermed I Aries president Adams was so Furious that he decided to publicize the whole thing which the newspapers eventually called the XYZ Affair and when the American people read about the XYZ affair they were just as mad as president Adams was at France and soon the United States and French ships found themselves engaged in what was technically called a Quasi War at Sea whenever French or American ships saw each other out on the horizon on the open es they would try to sink each other they would they would shoot cannons and pistols and every other kind of weapon that they had at each other and they would try to sink the other vessel now war was never officially declared but again whenever they met at Sea French and American ships would try to sink each other or destroy each other and eventually as a result of the Quasi War at Sea Congress actually voted to vastly expand the size and the resources of the American Navy in the future so almost by default America by starting this or getting involved in this Quasi War with the French had effectively by default again sided with Great Britain in a European Wide War in the year 1800 president Adams is going to negotiate eventually a peace treaty with France which will end the Quasi War but back at home in the United States President Adams soon realized that the more extreme members of his conservative Federalist Party had interpreted the war scare with France as a new opportunity to try to stamp out and Crush any and all political descent and to push for stronger even more centralized powers for the national government in the future and this ultimately resulted in two of the most controversial acts of the entire Adams Administration the Alien and Sedition Acts the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed passed by a federalist dominated Congress in the year 1798 and both of these acts made it harder for new immigrants to become naturalized voting American citizens it also allowed for the immediate forc deportation of any immigrants that any government official felt was quote unquote dangerous and the definition of what exactly made any particular immigrant dangerous was left completely up to the discretion of federal authorities but basically the the Alien and Sedition Acts were ultimately meant to completely silence any radical recent immigrants to America radical immigrants like Thomas Payne remember him when he wrote um his famous pamphlets he was actually a very recent uh immigrant to the United States they wanted to silence radical immigrants who might actually support the Republican party and who backed the French basically they wanted to get rid of anyone who was not really inclined to vote for president Adams or the Federalist Party in the future the Sedition Act actually authorized the prosecution of any group or publication that could be interpreted as critical of the existing government and that in and of itself walked dangerously close to invalidating the predictions for free speech outlined in the First Amendment to the Constitution this act in particular was meant to allow the federal government to suppress any newspaper that was published by their political opponents or any publication for that matter that could be interpreted as attacking the Adams Administration and its policies if the opposition Jeffersonian Republican party even ran a political campaign against the Federalist Party that was in power the Federalists could technically take a step and suppress the Republican Party officially which affected ly would have outlawed any kind of political opposition in this country at the time and Thomas Jefferson making a reference to the authoritarian nature of the Salem Witch Trials back in the 1690s said that these two acts in particular threatened to inaugurate a quote unquote reign of witches or bad guys essentially in the federal government itself eventually more than a dozen individuals were charged with a crime of sedition in the this political Witch Hunt many of whom actually were convicted and served time including even a man named Matthew Lions a sitting member of Congress who happened to be a part of the Republican party but instead of actually squelching the opposition the Alien and Sedition Acts actually ended up provoking even more sedition by making an issue for the very first time out of the right to free speech James Madison and Thomas Jefferson actually both d drafted resolutions that they intended to be passed by the state governments of Kentucky and Virginia concerning the Alien and Sedition Acts both of these documents criticize the Alien and Sedition Acts as direct violations of the First Amendment the Kentucky State resolution also introduced a novel New Concept known as nullification which will come up in the future nullification refers to a doctrine that holds that any individual state has a legal right to declare any national law that it doesn't agree with to be null and void within its borders nullification is eventually going to become a Cornerstone of later so-called states rights groups so remember the term no nullification it is absolutely going to come back up in the future so while many American people at the time very much hated the idea that individual states could pick and choose or refuse to follow any national federal laws and many weren't willing to accept the idea of nullification outright a more significant number of American people very much believed that the Alien and Sedition Acts directly violated their protections for free speech that were enshrined in the Constitution and they hated these two laws in particular So eventually while the Federalist Party members started to fight with each other over France and over the alien and Edition act the Jeffersonian Republican party on the other hand started to develop very strong party organization techniques that were incredibly effective at mobilizing voters encouraging people to get out and vote on Election Day in fact twice as many American voters turned out on Election Day in the year 1800 than at any previous election in the 1790s and almost all of those new voters tended to vote for the Jeffersonian Republican party in the election of 1800 the Federalist Party itself was starting to split apart at the seams and it could not fairly compete with the Republican party's much more aggressive organizational tactics the Republican party started to call the Federalist Party a group of monarchists people who wanted a king to rule over America people who were plotting to reverse all of the gains of the Revolution the Federalist Party though responded with very emotional Appeals to voters that tried to paint Thomas Jefferson who was the head lead Republican as a Godless atheistic French style revolutionary whose election as president would ultimately usher in a new reign of terror for America this time around now it should be noted Thomas Jefferson was not an atheist Thomas Jefferson was actually a deist preachers in America were very worried that the American people were becoming less and less religious at this time and they were wored about what less religion would mean for America morally in the future Church attendance had actually been steadily declining throughout the 1790s and deism an Enlightenment style religious philosophy that was very popular amongst many of the leaders of the American Revolution was itself starting to spread in popularity and theists just so you know viewed God as a kind of Master clock maker who created the very intricate device known as the world that we live on and who created the natural laws by which the universe runs but otherwise once God got the world going he left it alone for the most part deism even though its Believers still believed in a universal Creator Godlike figure was viciously attacked by Federalist Party members as the last step right before going to straight up atheism however these attacks against the Jeffersonian Republican party didn't really end up working because in the year 1800 Thomas Jefferson won the presidency with 73 Electoral College votes to John Adams's 65 so in the end John Adams actually only served one term as president he never got a second term and John Adams is going to be bitter about this for the rest of his life but before Thomas Jefferson took office as the new president of the United States the nation itself actually faced a pretty unusual con stitutional crisis you see the problem was is that in the Electoral College representatives of both the Federalist and the Republican party arranged to have one of their electors throw out one of their votes to guarantee that their party's presidential candidate would always have at least one more vote than the person who was running for the seat of vice president but somehow the designated Republican elector did not end up throwing out his one vote and so in the end both Thomas Jefferson and his running mate his own vice presidential candidate Aaron Burr had 73 votes at the end of the day so neither Man actually received a majority of the votes in the Electoral College and thus for the very first time in American history there was an electoral college tie now still to this day no one really knows if this was planned out or not Aaron Burr as we will soon find out was a man who always seemed to be hatching up some kind of scheme with known delusions of grandeur so he may have very well orchestrated this whole Fiasco in a strange attempt to try to seize the presidency for himself but the electors in the Electoral College remained deadlocked until finally Alexander Hamilton himself decided to intervene in the situation and finally tip the balance in favor of Thomas Jefferson in the Electoral College now even though Alexander Hamilton personally and politically did not like Thomas Jefferson Alexander Hamilton believed that Aaron Burr was probably a crazy man who was obsessed with gaining power Hamilton ultimately thought that Aaron Burr if he became president would turn into a desperate and so Hamilton actually felt compelled enough to step up and cast one final game-changing vote for Thomas Jefferson and in the future to to avoid a repeat of this same thing happening again Congress next adopted the 12th Amendment to the US Constitution which from here on out required Electoral College voters to cast separate votes for the office of president and vice president from here on out no more of that first place is President second place's vice president stuff anymore from here on out but the election of 1800 marked the first time in modern political history that a political party in power peacefully hand handed over the government to its opposition in this case the Republican party but the election of 1800 also eventually led to a deadly duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr Aaron Burr actually ended up killing Alexander Hamilton during this duel and then the very next day went back to his office as a vice president like nothing had happened like he hadn't just murdered the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States after killing Alexander Hamilton Thomas Jefferson actually completely abandoned his support of Aaron Burr and Burr felt like he was personally being attacked Aaron Burr is later on going to become involved in a conspiracy plot to try to seize land and form a new nation out in the western territories that he hoped would separate from the United States and then Take Over Control of land in Texas from Spain and Aaron Burr thought that he would be named the new nation's Emperor eventually but at this point when Thomas Jefferson found out about Aaron Burr's conspiracy he called for Burr to be put on trial for treason but ultimately even though Burr was put on trial he was able to somehow finagle his way with the jury in this case and he was ultimately acquitted of any kind of wrongdoing but after he was put on trial Aaron Burr kind of eventually got the message that Thomas Jefferson and the Republican Party didn't like him and didn't want him around anymore so Aaron Burr eventually went into self-imposed Exile in the year 1807 but after a couple of years Aaron Burr kind of decided I guess things are calm back in America now and he returned back to New York City and opened up practice as a lawyer which he continued to do until he died in the year 1836 and to top things off slavery constantly lurked in the background of all political debates in the 1790s and in fact Thomas Jefferson was only elected president because he received every single one of s the southern states Electoral College votes so ultimately Jeffersonian style Liberty ultimately rested on the fact that three fifths of enslave people were counted in St in Statewide census vote apportionment if that had not been the case if slaves were not counted towards Electoral College apportionment then John Adams would have easily been reelected in the the year 1800 and years before this even happened before 1800 rolls around the very first meeting of America's Congress started to receive petitions piles of petitions calling for the immediate abolition of slavery including one that was signed by good old Benjamin Franklin James Madison and other political leaders even though they found slavery to be a pretty distasteful and taboo topic to discuss out in public did believe that the topic of slavery at the time was simply too heated and too divisive to be made into a public issue in National politics and so Congress ultimately ended up ignoring most of these petitions but by ignoring this already highly divisive political issue at the highest level of American politics at the very beginning of the nation's history and continuing to ignore this problem for so many years later and trying to put off any kind of finalized discussion or decision on the practice of slavery in the United States of America for as long as humanly possible this only served to make the situation that much worse slavery is going to continue in America in fact it is going to spread out and eventually this situation is going to end up causing the nation to split into two antagonistic pieces in the American Civil War which is going to start in the year 1861 elsewhere in the world though at this exact same time in the nearby West Indies the Haitian revolution actually demonstrated how much slavery was still shaping and warping American conceptions of Freedom Jeffersonian Republicans who had celebrated the French Revolution saying that it was an advance for freedom and liberty everywhere were actually horrified by the slave revolt that kicked off in 1791 on the island of San deing which at the time was France's most treasured Colonial possession San deing was an island packed with sugar plantations in the Caribbean um San deing was actually the French half of the island and Santa Domingo was the Spanish half of the island on the French half of the island slaves led by a brilliant military commander known as tant latur whose portrait is here on this slide ended up defeating French and repeated British Bri forces that were sent to the island to try to suppress the rebellion and eventually those formerly enslaved people rose up and declared their own independent nation which they called Haiti in the year 1804 the Revolt in Haiti or sanding as it was called earlier affirmed the universal appeal of the notion of freedom in this age of worldwide revolutions and actually fostered a lot of hopes for Freedom amongst America's enslaved population white people in America on the other hand were generally terrified by the idea of an armed slave Uprising and white people tended to interpret the turmoil in Haiti as a definitive sign that black people could not and should not govern themselves and thus did not deserve Freedom as a result Jefferson's administration actually tried as hard as it could to isolate and eventually destroy the Western hemisphere's only second behind the United States independent republic by refusing to allow America to trade with or even officially recognize the new independent nation of Haiti the year 1800 also saw a new slave revolt pop up in America too this one led by Gabriel prer a Virginia enslaved man the plot that Gabriel came up with was to kill white people as he and several other enslaved people marched on their way to the city of Richmond where they planed to hold the state government of Virginia hostage and demand the abolition of slavery the Rebellion began some white people were eventually killed and others including the Virginia governor and future President James Monroe were actually held hostage in this situation until the weather took a turn and a violent storm led to the plot being discovered and in the aftermath 26 enslaved individuals including Gabriel prer himself were arrested and executed but these men were inspired by all of the language and symbols that had been brought up during the American Revolution and they frequently invoked their own right to Liberty and even compared themselves to people like George Washington in the aftermath of what came to be known as Gabriel's Rebellion though the state of Virginia began to pass laws that very much tightened up control over the States entire black population these laws for example made it much more difficult for slave owners to free individual slaves and also forced any slave that managed to become free to either leave the state immediately or be forceably returned to the condition of slavery as it turns out Thomas Jefferson turned out to be a very different president from John Adams whereas John Adams's presidency was SE as very stiff and stodgy and Ultra formal Thomas Jefferson wanted his presidency to be more open and perhaps even more laid-back and even practical so Thomas Jefferson himself set the style and tone of his whole entire Administration by holding a very unpretentious inauguration ceremony in Washington DC and then by immediately trying to eliminate some of the more aristocratic style practices of former President John Adams and his Federal IST party so at Jefferson's inauguration ceremony in March of 1801 President Jefferson tried to conciliate his old Federalist opponents by claiming that both parties the Republicans and the Federalists deep down shared the same principles even if they disagreed in their opinions about how to achieve and uphold those principles Thomas Jefferson further vowed that he would reduce the size of the federal government promote free trade ensure and guarantee the freedom of religion and freedom of the press and also that he would avoid any entangling alliances with other nations Jefferson also sought to dismantle a lot of the old Federalist Party edifice that remained in Washington DC and to prevent the kind of centralized strong federal government that the Federalist Party tried to promote immediately upon gaining office Thomas Jefferson pardoned anyone who was still in jail for violations of the Sedition Act he dras ially reduced the size of the Army and the Navy and cut down dramatically the number of federal government employees he abolished all taxes collected by the national government except for the Tariff and he then paid off a huge chunk of the nation's debt Jefferson genuinely felt that the Federalist Party had truly aristocratic pretensions and actually wanted to bring back a monarchy and thus was ultimately bad for the United States in the end he felt that when his Republican party defeated the Federalist Party in the 1800 election Jefferson felt that this was a sign that his party alone was following in the footsteps of the True Legacy of the American Revolution and Federalists for for their part it should be explained didn't actually want a king to despotically rule over America but instead Federalists actually had a much more formal but also much more commercial and business-like vision of what they wanted America to become in the future the Federalist Party accepted that there were always going to be social and economic inequalities in the American population so what was the good of trying to fight against those inequalities in fact most Federalist Party supporters tended to already be fairly wealthy people so it generally makes sense that Federalist Party members felt a bit more entitled to power much like aristocrats did over in Europe and much like rich people do still to this day almost everywhere around the world Jefferson's Republican party though believed the exact opposite Jeffersonian Republicans favored a vision of America where in the future almost everyone in this country would be a self-sufficient independent farmer that the nation would be one in which everyone was ultimately on some somewhat of an equal socioeconomic footing with everyone else there would be no extremes of wealth or poverty in this idealistic Jeffersonian Republic American future Republicans also very much favored constant territorial expansion in their minds obtaining more land for the American Nation would mean that more and more American people would have access to that land for farming and ensuring that everyone could have roughly an equal amount of land under their possession and Republicans also tended to favor the expansion of the practice of slavery as long as it promoted a sense of common Unity amongst those equal independent and usually white in uh farmers in Thomas Jefferson and other Republicans um dreams but despite Jefferson's Wishes the Supreme Court was under the control of a new chief justice named John Marshall who was himself a Federalist Party supporter and had been appointed by President John Adams and under the offices of John Marshall the Supreme Court is actually going to greatly increase its power during the Jefferson Administration for example in the infamous case of Marbury versus Madison which happened in 1803 the John Marshall dominated Supreme Court ended up establishing the right of the Supreme Court in the future to determine whether or not any act of Congress violates the Constitution and this is a power known as judicial review the Marshall Court also very quickly soon after ended up establishing the right of the Supreme Court to determine the constitutionality of state level laws in addition to federal laws so whereas John Adams had been a very stiff formal man and as such during his term as president formal receptions and meetings and dinner parties were normal events Thomas Jefferson actually thought that such formality was just one more of the snobby aristocratic pretentions of the Federalist Party so Jefferson actually replaced those older formal meetings with much smaller casual typically menonly dinner parties held at the White House where President Jefferson hoped that politically likeminded men would be able to talk politics freely with one another in a very straightforward uninhibited language and not having to use formal manners and that's why no ladies were allowed at these boys only parties because the men couldn't curse and discuss certain unsavory topics like slavery around women in polite Society at the time so since Thomas Jefferson's meetings were usually menonly situations the capital city of the United States of America didn't end up having much of a gender mixed social calendar with grand parties and balls and formal you know party-like receptions or anything like that politically minded women weren't allowed into the guys only meetings that President Jefferson regularly held and women weren't really able to mingle at presidential functions at the white house or at any other government function like they had in the past many of those ladies though who felt left out of the president's Boyson Dinner Club ended up getting together and creating a very loose schedules of loose schedule of dinner parties and receptions were both men and women sometimes who had different political connections and different political interests could still get together and socialize and mingle and maybe even do some lobbying on behalf of their own political interests or those of their friends who were running for office while also networking and having a good time amongst Washington DC's most elite echelons of society after the chaos and Terror of the worst bloodiest parts of the French Revolution started to settle down eventually a new leader merged for the nation of France Napoleon bonapart who began ruling over France in the year 1799 and who later ended up audaciously crowning himself as the emperor of France in 1804 Napoleon didn't feel that there was anyone on Earth who had the power and authority to actually hand him a crown he thought that only he was powerful enough so Napoleon basically just crowned himself then in a secret treaty with the nation of Spain Napoleon Ian bought back for France the Louisiana Territory that France had lost at the end of the Seven Years War or French and Indian War as it was called in North America the Louisiana Territory stretched roughly from the western edge of the Mississippi River all the way across the continent to the Rocky Mountains and president Thomas Jefferson was actually pretty scared of the idea that America would now be surrounded by two European powerhouses to the north and to the West Britain had Canada up in the north and now France controlled Louisiana Territory out in the west now President Jefferson hadn't been all that worried when Spain was in control of Louisiana Territory because by this particular time in history Spain had become a relatively unstable and pretty weak nation and didn't really Spain didn't really pose a threat to the US but Jefferson at this point began to pressure Napoleon to sell to America just the important port city at the mouth of the Mississippi River known as New Orleans and maybe if Napoleon was in a generous mood maybe uh he might be willing to sell some of the coastal territory in the southern parts around the city of New Orleans to the US but to president Jefferson's complete shock in the year 1803 Napoleon instead offered to sell Jefferson and thus the United States the entirety of the Louisiana Territory for the bare bottom price of $15 million that's about three and2 pennies per acre of land that America ended up getting now the reason why France was even willing to sell the Louisiana Territory was because France was desperately in need of money at this time in addition to having to pay all of France's soldiers and fight Wars all over Europe under Napoleon France was now facing revolutions that were popping up in its far worldwide colonies in fact it was the revolution in Haiti that led Napoleon to eventually sell off the gigantic Louisiana territory to the United States Napoleon brilliant military leader that he might have been never was able to reclaim the island that Haiti was on no matter how hard he seemed to try the formerly enslaved people living in Haiti were fiercely independent now and the island was also packed full of mic diseases like malaria and yellow fever that tended to kill and wipe out giant portions of the French army whenever that Army went over to try to recapture Haiti so defeated after multiple failed attempts to regain control of Hai Napoleon at this time decided that he desperately needed money for his overworked Army and for his nation and he generally had no use for Louisiana Territory anymore now that the valuable sugar island of Haiti no longer belonged to France the Louisiana Territory was ultimately used by France to grow food products that could then be transported down to San deing to feed the enslaved Workforce down there but now that Haiti didn't belong to France anymore it made very clear sense to Napoleon to sell off that unneeded Louisiana land in return for much needed cash but president Thomas Jefferson actually saw the Louisiana Purchase as one of of the greatest achievements of his life and yet this view is actually pretty ironic given what we know about Thomas Jefferson himself now the American people in general were more than happy to secure access to the port of New Orleans thus guaranteeing access to a previously precarious right to freely trade up and down the Mississippi River the Louisiana Purchase though automatically doubled the size of the United States of America even though President Jefferson was originally what was known as a strict constructionist meaning that he very much believed that the president could and should only do things that were literally and specifically spelled out in the Constitution and as a reminder buying land of this enormous size and spending such a ridiculous amount of money like $15 million without the express con uh approval of Congress was mentioned nowhere in the document of the Constitution this seems that it kind of was contradictory to what you might expect Thomas Jefferson to have done as a politician but the fact that Jefferson went ahead and purchased Louisiana Territory shows us that Thomas Jefferson was occasionally willing to bend his beliefs for what he perceived as the betterment of The American Nation Jefferson essentially thought that having all of this new available land out to the West would mean that America would now have an almost infinite supply of land for future generations of American Independent Farmers to move out into and to use members of the Federalist Party though opposed the purchase saying that the president had wasted all of that money side note uh so what actually happened to Haiti well America refused to recognized the newly independent Haitian Republic and publicly boycotted Haiti whenever it could refusing to trade with the nation France also refused to officially recognize an independent Haitian nation and in the year 1825 a rren France threatened to invade Haiti once again and return all of the formerly enslaved people living there back to bondage so desperately fearing for their safety at the time Haitian government officials were essentially forced to accept a deal offered by the French government whereby Haiti would pay almost insur mountable reparations payments to former slave owners to effectively pay for their own people's freedom in return for the nation of France backing down on its Invasion threats and to officially recognize Haiti as a free and independent country so France basically held the nation of Haiti hostage with the threat of military Invasion and violent reins slav if the people of Haiti didn't pay an otherwise astronomical almost unthinkable sum of 150 million gold French Franks which is the equivalent to several billions of dollars in today's money in fact it took until the year 1947 for the nation of Haiti to finally pay off the money that it agreed to pay to France um every single year almost all of the money that made up the income of the Haitian economy from the year 1825 until 194 7 that's the amount of money that it took for Haiti to pay off these uh ransomers I guess you could say so under such terrible circumstances having to pay this ridiculous amount of reparations for over a hundred straight years Haiti was never actually given a chance at true success it was hobbled right from the start of its days as an independent nation by almost insurmountable levels of debt which is one of the chief causes of hades's recurrent poverty and instability that are still a major problem to this very so soon after purchasing Louisiana Territory President Jefferson then dispatched two fellow virgins a man named Maryweather Lewis and another named William Clark and he gave them the job of going out and exploring this new Louisiana Territory Lewis and Clark were told to conduct scientific and Commercial surveys in order to find any kind of way to exploit the Region's resources they were also Al told to start developing trade with the local Native American groups and maybe if they had time find a viable commercial route to the Pacific Ocean that might allow the United States to start fostering trade relationships with Asian nations in just two years time Lewis and Clark Guided by a 15-year-old shason woman named sakaia um traveled all the way to the Pacific Ocean reaching it in the area of today's Oregon and made their way back to to President Jefferson though Lewis and Clark did not end up finding a viable commercial Pathway to Asia their success in reaching the Pacific Ocean did reinforce the belief that America's territory could and should one day extend all the way to the Pacific Ocean but incorporating all of Louisiana Territory especially the City of New Orleans into the United States of America was not an easy task the City of New Orleans itself had multiple legal and cultural Traditions that had been begun in that City by the Spanish and the French slaves in the City of New Orleans under these regimes did actually have some limited legal rights but even though the treaty that transferred Louisiana to America promised that the United States would recognize all previous rights and legal customs of the people living in Louisiana Territory unfortunately the rights of enslaved people and free black people were severely circumscribed once the United States of America took over control of that Louisiana Territory the Louisiana Purchase showed that despite being far removed physically from the European continent events that still happened across the Atlantic Ocean could still deeply affect the United States of America now because the United States still depended on many Goods especially manufactured goods from Europe just to exist Wars that happened over in Europe still did directly influence the American people's livelihoods from time to time President Jefferson hoped to avoid becoming entangled in Europe's seemingly constant Warfare But ultimately President Jefferson found that he could not ignore all of these struggles Jefferson who actually began his term as president promising a significantly diminished centralized government actually ended up becoming the first American President to use America's military to fight America's very first International war and this was a war that ultimately was fought to protect trade and commerce on the other side of the world over in the Mediterranean the problem was is that in the Mediterranean area uh there were pirates who were preventing trade from happening freely there in Northern Africa a nation which was known as the bar States it was actually composed of the northern Coastline of the African continent and includes pieces of the modern-day nations of Morocco Algeria Tunisia and Libya the barbery states had for a very long time prayed on both European and American ships that came across their path although the barbery states would refrain from attacking a certain Nation ships if that Nation paid a hefty tribute or Ransom to call off off their Pirates whenever let's say American ships were sailing through the Mediterranean but when Thomas Jefferson became president he refused demands from the barbery states that the United States of America increase its payments to the barbery states and so immediately a war between the barbery states and the United States started which lasted until the year 1804 America was able to fairly easily win in this war and the treaty which ended the barbery war guaranteed the freedom to ship freely in the Mediterranean and all across the Atlantic Ocean not just for America but for all trade partners that America might have in the area in the future but unfortunately war is going to keep on happening over on the European continent and when War kicked back up again between Britain and France in 1803 both Nations tried to impose a trade blockade to deny the other trade specifically with the United States of America which again announced that it would remain officially neutral in this conflict Napolean as I briefly mentioned before was almost constantly at War over in Europe and at this time a war between France and Spain and then between France and Britain was being fought and this war eventually ended up embroiling the United States of America in a dispute over the rights of neutral countries trade blockades ship seizures and the imprisonment of American Sailors so what happened here is that France wanted to prevent America from being able to trade with Great Britain and Great Britain on the other hand wanted to prevent America from being able to trade with France so both sides the British and the French blockaded American ships to try to prevent American goods from being able to reach either of those European nations so America was basically through no fault of its own really caught in the middle of this fight between Britain and France America wanted to trade with both countries without any restrictions but Britain in France had different ideas the British also started to engage in the impressment of American Sailors essentially stopping their boats and kidnapping American Sailors and then forcing them into service for the British royal Navy there was massive pressure back in America for revenge against the British for impressing American sha sailors but President Jefferson very much wanted to avoid going to war with Great Britain and so he came up with a law that he thought would punish Great Britain and France for their trade uh their trade blockades President Jefferson ultimately resorted to issuing the Embargo Act of SE of 1807 as a substitute for going to war directly with either France or Great Britain President Jefferson believing that America's economy required free trade meaning no outside interference with trade at all especially not from other countries trying to stop your trade ships and prevent them from being able to buy and sell Goods all around the world President Jefferson enacted the Embargo which essentially prohibited All American ships from sailing to any foreign ports and essentially he put this law in place to try to force an end to the blockades President Jefferson thought that the whole entire world would rise up against Britain and France if they couldn't easily trade with American ships and they thought that pressure internationally would eventually cause Britain and France to give up their blockades but as it turns out the Embargo stopped almost every single American export trade and ended up devastating the nation's ports but did not at all end up persuading Britain or France to end their trade blockades so the Embargo Act essentially hited American ships from leaving any American port to go to any other Nation across the world until both Britain and France agreed to repeal their blockades against America Jefferson's idea was to hurt the rest of Europe in particular which he thought desperately needed access to America's trade goods and to get some of those other nations to pressure the British and the French to end their blockades of America well as it turns out European trade was not hurt very much at all by not having access to American products but who was hurt were American Merchants American Merchants were definitely hurt even more since now under the Embargo they could not sell their goods anywhere outside of the United States of America the American export trade and all of its profits immediately dried up with Thomas Jefferson's self-imposed embargo and then a huge economic depression soon settled down on America in 1808 Thomas Jefferson's successor as President James Madison easily won election as president and this new president James Madison was Thomas Jefferson's hand chosen Prof successor Madison was actually our shortest president ever he stood at a whopping height of 5' 4 in and he was very frail looking as an individual but in reality James Madison was an intellectual giant eventually President Madison and his Republican dominated Congress are going to push for war against Great Britain a war that the American nation was eager to fight but that it wasn't necessarily adequately prepared for so with the Embargo Act of 1807 turning out to be a huge failure and being deeply unpopular in America in the year 1810 President Madison forged a new policy in which trade would be resumed with all nations both Great Britain and France and all other International countries that wanted to but this new policy stipulated that if either France or Great Britain stopped their blockade against American shipping that the United States would immediately reimpose an embargo on the other nation that was still imposing its blockade so essentially uh if this is confusing what it basically means is is that America threw out the proposition hey Britain and France both of you are imposing blockades against America but should one of you give up your blockade and start trading with America the United States let's say for example France ends up ending their blockade against America if France gives up their blockade first then America as a sign of thanks will sign a trade agreement with France and America will then impose its own trade embargo War blockade on Great Britain so whichever Nation took the opportunity First America would start trading with them as it turns out France actually seized the moment and ended its blockade against America First and at the same time the British actually increased their attacks on American ships and sailors so in 1812 President Madison resumed the Embargo against just the nation of Great Britain and a trade agreement was signed between the US and France but young congressmen who came from the south and the West who came to be known as warhawks uh such as Henry Clay from the state of Kentucky and John Calhoun from the state of South Carolina they immediately called for a war against Great Britain in part because they felt that a war would be a good opportunity for the United States of America to maybe conquer and take over some more territory from Great Britain maybe Florida down in the South or maybe even taking over Canada up in the north North other supporters of going to war with Great Britain wanted a war to try to defend the principles of completely free trade and in Europe's seeming economic dominance over America in the near future but at the same time that it looked like war between the US and Great Britain was about to start at the exact same time deteriorating relations with Native American people out in the western territories also precipitated a war under President Thomas Jefferson the federal government continued its efforts to quote unquote civilize or what it really meant was to forcibly assimilate Native American people into white American style culture even while the government still made efforts to actively remove native people from their lands in an effort to open up more space for white settlers to move into the West Native Americans living in the western territories that were acquired through the Louisiana Purchase by now even after just a couple of years were already significantly outnumbered by white settlers and some tribes particularly the creek and the Cherokee peoples started to actively try to adopt white ways of life such as practicing settled Agriculture and in some cases even practicing slavery but there were other people amongst the Native American population who were known as nativists who wanted to end all European and white influences and to resist any further white settlement of their ancestral lands though America and Great Britain were already directly headed into war against each other it was actually the unceasing demand for land out in the western territories that stimulated fighting between the American government and Native American people in the first place in the dozen or so years before the year 1812 various movements of Prophecy and cultural revitalization started to sweep throughout western and southern native tribes calling on Native American people to stop the white man's destructive practices such as gambling and the drinking of alcohol but a much more militant position was actually brought up by two shauni Nation brothers named tumsa and tensa tawa these two men adamantly refused to sign any treaties with white people and also advocated for fierce resistance to the American Federal government and tinwa who was actually a religious prophet for his people argued that white men were the source of all evil in the world and that native people should completely separate from everything white and European in the future if they wanted to survive eventually what came to be known as a pan Indian resistance movement was created by Tuma and tens quwa and this movement is very important because from here on out no longer were individual native tribes supposed to consider themselves separate entities when it came to dealing with the American government from this point on it was expected that all Native American tribes would put aside their differences and start working together as one unified group that saw themselves as Indians first and foremost and then members of separate individual tribes next white encroachment upon native land had to be stopped according to this pan Indian resistance movement and tribal and Clan divisions needed to be overcome if the Native American people were to truly stand chance against the American government in this fight tumsa in tinwa decided to headquarter their pan indan resistance movement in a little tiny spot known as profits town which was built on a small area where the tipic Cano and Wabash Rivers come together in what is now known as Indiana and these brothers wanted prophet's toown to serve as a gathering place for all sorts of different intertribal confederations open to all Native people from all tribes and all groups but American white settlers wanted every square inch of native land that they could get their hands on even the footprint of land where prophet's town was and those white settlers as it turns out would do almost anything to drive Native Americans off of that land and to claim it for themselves the American governor of what was at that time known as Indiana territory was a man named William Henry Harrison and he actually eventually LED an American Army down to Prophetstown and forced a fight against tinwa and tumsa at what was known as the Battle of tipa Cano both sides actually suffered massive losses in this battle but Harrison's Army was ultimately able to drive out all surviving native peoples from prophet's town and then the American Army proceeded to burn that town to the ground at this point teuma had finally had enough with America's Government after the battle of tipa Cano in the year 1811 tumsa started to Ally his pan Indian resistance movement with the British government from here on out when President James Madison finally asked Congress to declare war on Great Britain in the year 1812 the vote in Congress actually reflected a really divided nation Federalists and Republicans who represented northern states where mertile and financial interests were the most highly concentrated tended to vote adamantly against going to war but southern and western Representatives voted overwhelmingly to go to war so deeply divided at this point the United States Navy still lacked a very large army or navy America did not have a centralized banking system since the bank of the United States's original charter expired back in 1811 and Northern merchants and Northern Bankers simply refused to loan the government any money to pursue a war against Great Britain and Great Britain even though it was distracted by other Wars that were going on over in the European continent initially repelled almost every American Invasion attempt on Canadian territory and Great Britain was still imposing a highly effective blockade on All American International Shipping but the Republican Party had the majority in Congress and ultimately the Republican Party wanted to go to war with Great Britain and so war was eventually declared but the Republicans were actually taking America directly into a war that America wasn't really ready to fight at that time America in 1812 was still a very young Nation its process of how to adequately raise and then train an army for war hadn't really been planned out just yet sure America had made due during the time of the Revolutionary War and managed to defeat Britain but now America was its own independent Sovereign Nation and there were rules and regulations in place now that were very very different from how things were before the Revolutionary War had started back in the 1870s eventually the War of 1812 as this war came to be known ended up being fought mostly on land not not out on the Open Seas and just like in the American Revolutionary War America still didn't have a very strong Navy and it certainly couldn't even think about taking on the formidable British Navy at this time so Canada actually turned out to be the only space where the United States felt that it could strike directly against British Imperial forces the War of 1812 did not go well for America at first and in fact one of the darkest hours for The American Nation came in 1814 when the British military force occupied and then completely burned down the nation's capital city of Washington DC and forced the entire federal government government to flee for its lives but the British burning down Washington DC actually really angered the American people and very much stiffened American resistance the United States though had very few victories in this war um but they were important victories including the American defense of the city of Baltimore at the Battle of Fort McKenry which actually was an event that inspired the song that became America's national anthem the The Star Spangled Banner the United States decisively vanquished native forces out in the South and in the West in fact America's Army killed tumsa and many other militant Native Americans in this war most notably perhaps forces led by a young military leader known as Andrew Jackson forced Native American people to give up much of the Southeastern lands that eventually became the states of Alabama and Mississippi and then famously repulsed British forces at the infamous Battle of New Orleans in January of 1815 the Battle of New Orleans was an outright Massacre and it was a very lopsided victory for the United States in fact the British lost over 2,000 men in the Battle of New Orleans alone the American forces on the other hand only lost 21 Men but this Battle of New Orleans was actually fought before news reached America that American and British negotiators had already weeks earlier signed a treaty known as the Treaty of gent which had ended the War of 1812 a month before the fighting at the Battle of New Orleans even happened it took time for news to go across the Atlantic Ocean and by the time Andrew jackon started to fight at the Battle of New Orleans the War of 1812 had technically been ended two weeks earlier and in the end when the people of America found out about the content of the Treaty of gint the treaty basically changed nothing it gave the United States no new territory and no new rights regarding American shipping or trade or impressment of soldiers essentially the Treaty of gent which happened before this massive blowout victory at the Battle of New Orleans for America basically put things back on the map the way they were before the War of 1812 even started and so ultimately a lot of people in America were disappointed but at the time some American people started to call the War of 1812 a second war of independence the War of 1812 did actually affirm the ability of the American Republic to defend itself and to wage war without having to sacrifice its Republican institutions the War of 1812 also made Andrew Jackson into a nation wide everyone knew who he was hero and also the War of 1812 completely sealed the doomed fate of Native American people who still occupied lands to the east of the Mississippi River and thus finally secured this vast area of territory for White Settlement many of whom would eventually especially in the South bring slaves and the practice of slavery with them as they began to expand out into this Western territory the War of 1812 also strengthened American people's nationalism and their sense of isolation and separation from Europe Andrew Jackson's victory at the Battle of New Orleans completely squashed any future British hopes of maintaining a sphere of influence in Louisiana and also it sounded the death Nell for the Federalist Party the reason for this is because with a massive Resurgence in American patriotism as a direct result of Andrew Jackson's resounding victory in New Orleans the Federalist Party who up until this point had been more than willing to deal with the British even earlier and who agreed to the terms of the Treaty of gent in the first place which seemed to give America no real advantages those people those Federalists were seen as whiners and defeatists and to some Americans they were even seen as traitors who had been prepared to absolutely desert The American Nation in the face of the British enemy so in the aftermath of the War of 1812 the Federalist Party and its sense of federalism was dead and in the grave so of course ultimately the War of 1812 sealed the demise of the Federalist Party which up until this point had been briefly revitalized by widespread opposition to the War of 1812 in the north especially President James Madison though only narrowly won reelection as president in the year 1812 but then a very ill-timed Convention of the New England Federalist Party in Hartford Connecticut in December of 1814 right before the massive victory at the Battle of New Orleans ended up badly injuring the reputation of the Federalist Party in December of 1814 convention delegates to the Federalist Party convention vehemently criticized the domination of the American presidency up until this point by people from Virginia they also vocally lamented the diminishing influence of the Northeast especially as new southern and western states started to join the union of the United States of America and the Federalist convention also started to call for an immediate end to the 3 fifths clause which gave Southern States all of that extra power according to the Constitution Federalists demanded that from here on out 2third votes in Congress were necessary if America was ever to declare war again in the future or admit new states or try to impose any laws that might restrict free trade but then just a few days after the end of the uh of the Federalist Party convention Andrew Jackson had his electrifying victory at the Battle of New Orleans and subsequently this made the Federalist Party seem very unpatriotic So within just a few years the Federalist Party is going to completely disappear but the urban and Commercial mostly business-minded interests that the Federalist Party represented were seen as rather small in an ever expanding mostly agrarian nation and the elitism of the old Federalist Party and their distrust of popular democracy was seen as increasingly out of touch with an increasingly Democratic American culture but the Federalist Party did manage to raise an issue before it died off that is not going to go away anytime in the near future and that issue was the consistent domination of the federal government by people from the slaveholding South and the kind of commercial development that the Federalist Party championed would soon end up inaugurating a social and economic transformation of the American Nation as we know it