The American Yawp — Chapter Eight: The Early Republic
Abridged for Intermediate-High Learners

Thomas Jefferson's election in 1800 was celebrated as a "revolution" won by voting, not war. But the early republic was full of conflict. Free and enslaved Black Americans, women, Native Americans, and poor whites all demanded a voice in the new nation.

In August 1800, an enslaved man named Gabriel planned a rebellion: nearly a thousand enslaved men would attack Richmond, Virginia, seize weapons, and capture the governor. The plot was betrayed, and Gabriel was hanged with twenty-five others. The rebellion showed that enslaved people could organize a sophisticated uprising, and the successful Haitian Revolution (1791–1804) inspired Black Americans in their struggle for freedom.

At the same time, white Americans debated the nature of race. European scientists classified humans by skin color and skull shape. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1784) that Black people could not improve mentally. The Black surveyor Benjamin Banneker wrote to Jefferson, demanding that he accept that all people were "all of one flesh." Many whites wanted to send freed Black people to Africa, believing the two races could not live together peacefully.

He cut taxes and reduced the army to only 3,000 men. His greatest achievement was the Louisiana Purchase of 1803: for $15 million, the United States bought about 828,000 square miles from France, doubling the country's size. Napoleon sold the territory because war in Europe and a slave revolt in Haiti had ruined his American plans. Federalists feared the new land would become slave states and increase Southern power.

Jefferson's foreign policy was less successful. Britain and France were at war, and both attacked American ships. The British practice of impressment — seizing an American sailor and forcing him into the British navy — enraged Americans. After a British warship attacked the USS Chesapeake in 1807, Jefferson convinced Congress to pass the Embargo Act, closing American ports to all foreign trade. He hoped economic pressure would force Britain and France to respect American neutrality. Instead, the embargo wrecked the American economy: exports fell from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808. Smuggling spread, and critics called Jefferson a tyrant.

Meanwhile, Native American nations on the frontier resisted American expansion. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, the Prophet, built a confederacy of Native peoples to stop the loss of their lands. In 1811, American forces attacked Prophetstown at the Battle of Tippecanoe. When war with Britain came, Tecumseh formed an alliance with the British, but he was killed at Moraviantown, Ontario, in October 1813, and his confederacy collapsed.

In 1812, Congress declared war on Britain. The causes were impressment, British trade restrictions, and British support for Native resistance in the West. Young "War Hawks" like Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun demanded the war. American invasions of Canada failed, but the young U.S. Navy won surprising victories under the slogan "Free Trade and Sailors' Rights!" In August 1814, the British burned Washington, D.C. But in January 1815, Andrew Jackson defeated the British at New Orleans — a battle fought after the Treaty of Ghent (December 24, 1814) had already ended the war. The victory made Americans feel proud and united.

The war destroyed the Federalist Party. New England Federalists who met at the Hartford Convention in 1814 were accused of treason, and their party never recovered. After the war, nationalism surged. Leaders promoted the American System — a national bank, protective tariffs, and new roads and canals to bind the country together. In 1823, President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine, warning European powers against new colonization anywhere in the Americas. The young republic had survived its second war with Britain, but questions about slavery, Native land, and who counted as an American remained unanswered.