Adams’ Presidency

The Election of 1796

• Republicans: Thomas Jefferson

• Federalists: John Adams• Federalists won control of

Congress• Adams won presidency• http://www.youtube.com/wat

ch?v=xqAt8A0W204

The Election of 1796 (cont.)

• As the 2nd highest vote-getter in the electoral college, Jefferson became the VP• The 12th amendment would change the process

of the selection of the VP

• The presidential election of 1800, won by Thomas Jefferson, was the first American presidential election when power was peacefully transferred from one political party to another.• Revolution w/o violence

The French Crisis, 1798-1799

• The French were angered by America’s signing of Jay’s Treaty with the British• The French began to seize U.S. merchant ships

• Hoping to avoid war with France, President Adams sent a peace commission to Paris to negotiate

The French Crisis, 1798-1799 (cont.)

• XYZ Affair• Agents of the French government demanded

a bribe as the price of negotiations• This outraged Americans and provoked an

anti-French and anti-Republican backlash• Republican candidates were defeated in the

1798 congressional elections• An undeclared naval war broke out against

the French• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORbiuWE

QW6s

The Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798

• Federalist idea

• Aimed at silencing the opposition press and in other ways weakening the Republican Party• 14-year wait for citizenship• Hurt the Republicans by eliminating their Irish-

American supporters

The Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798 (cont.)

• Sedition Act• Made it a crime to speak, write, or print

anything unfavorable about the government or the president that would bring him “into contempt or disrepute”

• Federalist prosecuted and jailed a number of Republican journalists and political candidates

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9oJTfW38Oc

The Alien and Sedition Acts, 1798 (cont.)

• Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions• Madison and Jefferson anonymously wrote• Passed by VA and KY in 1798• Claimed that state govts. could step in between

their residents and the enforcement of unconstitutional federal laws such as the Alien and Sedition Acts

• The resolutions set a precedent for the later states’ rights positions that states were the proper judges of federal actions and could nullify unconstitutional statues

The Election of 1800

• Republicans nominated Jefferson as President and Aaron Burr as VP

• Federalist nominated Adams

• The election took place in an atmosphere of tense and bitter partisanship

• Adams reopened negotiations with France (hurt his own election prospects)• Quieted war scare on which Federalists fortunes

had thrived• The negotiations eventually patched things up

with France and spared an unnecessary war

The Election of 1800 (cont.)

• The Republicans won the election

• Jefferson and Burr ended up tied for president (under the Constitution as originally written, electors did not vote separately for president and VP)

• The tie threw the election into the House of Representatives• It took 36 votes to name Jefferson president

Economic and Social Change

• Producing for Markets• In colonial America, the vast majority of whites

lived and produced on small family-owned farms• Husbands, wives, children, and sometimes hired

hand and/or servants grew and consumed their own food• Also they made almost everything else they

needed• Whatever little surplus the farm family

accumulated, they traded with neighbors or merchants for items they could not produce

Producing for Markets (cont.)

• By the 1780’s, New England farms with their thin, rocky soil were insufficient to support growing families• Grown sons and young couples moved west• Remaining daughters, wives, and sometimes

husbands began supplementing their income by home manufacturing• Weaving cloth, sewing garments and shoes, and making

nails

Producing for Markets (cont.)

• Merchants traveling into the countryside supplied them with the raw materials and later collected their output, paying them by the piece• Beginning of the industrial revolution

• The merchants behind these innovations were also in the 1780’s and 1790’s, opening the first banks and stock exchanges• Preached the need for the U.S.A. to industrialize• Supported Hamilton’s economic policies which

they saw as good for business

White Women in the Republic

• The Revolution brought little change in the status of women

• A few advanced thinkers did call for women’s equality• Larger economic role that women played in the

1790’s• Republican ideology

• NJ briefly allowed women to vote

• Women were generally permitted to chose their own husbands

• A small but increasing number of wives requested and were granted divorces

White Women in the Republic (cont.)

• More educational opportunities opened for white women• These were justified by the argument that women

had to be educated so they could inculcate republican virtues in their sons and daughters• Republican Motherhood

• But the organized fight for women’s rights did not begin until the 19th century

Land and Culture: Native Americans

• Indian Trade Acts• To stop the fraudulent land purchases obtained by

many Americans• Regulated the conduct of non-Indians on lands still

under tribal control

• But by 1795, eastern Indians had suffered devastating losses of land and population• Indian culture was buckling under the strain of

continual frontier warfare

Land and Culture: Native Americans (cont.)

• Amongst the broken survivors, some sank into alcoholism

• Others simply moved

• Others were absorbed into other Indian populations

• Most still clung to their traditional ways

Land and Culture: Native Americans (cont.)

• The Seneca prophet Handsome Lake and other reformers attempted to combat liquor and convince Iroquois men to become farmers

• However, many Native Americans resisted further social change

African-American struggles

• As the revolutionary idealism that had eased out slavery in the North and won some rights for free black lessened in the 1790’s, the position of African-Americans deteriorated• In the late 1790’s and early 1800’s• DE, MD, KY, NJ rescinded the vote to freedmen• Congress protected southern masters with the 1793

Fugitive Slave Law

African-American struggles (cont.)

• White fears generated by the slave uprising in Saint Domingue and the 1800 Gabriels’ Rebellion in VA further eroded sentiment for abolition and racial equality

• Southern plantation slavery was revived• The demand of the British textile industry for

cotton• Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793• Making the institution too profitable to question

Conclusion

• By 1801, the dangers of civil war and national disintegration had declined, if not disappeared

• 2 rival political parties had developed• But with the 1800 election, the nation managed a

peaceful transfer of power from Federalists to Republicans

• Slavery and racism, after some abatement, were again on the rise