The United States had undergone many changes from the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to the 1820s. In that time an American Identity emerged. In looking at this new identity, one must answer four questions: What did it mean to be an American in 1820? How did race, class, gender, and location influence this definition? How was American society different from European and British society? And was the United States an egalitarian democracy from 1776 to 1820?
According to Gordon Wood, “by the 1820s America had become the most egalitarian, individualistic, and money-making society in Western history.” This description reflected the times and was thus a white male perspective. America was a society of ordinary people. Americans were optimistic, forward looking people who looked for opportunities and then exploited them. If one worked hard, the effects of the Protestant work ethic, a man could rise up the ladder of success and reach his dreams.
This description did not happen overnight with the signing of the Declaration of Independence but evolved over time. Americans from the beginning were an independent thinking lot, coming over to escape religious intoleration and closed opportunity. However, they still adhered to Old World customs of deference. As Smelser noted, around the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, American society shifted from a hierarchal order to a society that valued individualism. Jeffersonian and Madisonian policies encouraged this shift by placing a greater emphasis on skill and intelligence rather than prestige and money.
As much as Americans were forward looking they also were westward looking. Already pushing over the Appalachian Mountains before the Revolution, Americans started to gain a sense of their Manifest Destiny, or as Rossiter put it, the American Mission, with the Louisiana Purchase. There was a whole continent to settle and turn into the new utopia. Land and its ownership was always a motivation for Americans and there was plenty of land out west for a man to make something of himself.
While a man had his individual freedoms, could make a living for himself and family, and had a voice and opportunity in his government, one thing was missing in the American identity that kept him, in the eyes of the rest of the civilized world, inferior. That thing was self-respect. To the empires of the Old World, America was just an upstart who was dependent on them. Americans were ignored politically and commercially manipulated. This changed, according to Borden, with the conclusion of the War of 1812 and the Battle of New Orleans which moved America “from near disaster to a new era of national self-respect.”
This definition of an American, as noted above, applied to most white males. Native Americans had a rather different perspective that saw their star dimming as the new Americans began to glow brightly. While thought of as a race that could be incorporated into American society as soon as they gave up their “savage” ways and adopt civilization, by the 1820s the new Americans had grown impatient and forcefully removed Native Americans west of the Mississippi River (Sheehan). Native Americans would no longer be considered Americans, treated as separate sovereign peoples, foreigners in their own land.
Like Native Americans, African Americans also saw their fortunes turn for the worst. Slavery was on the rise in the South as new lands opened up and the Cotton Kingdom was beginning to take shape. The trend of emancipation during the 1790s was reversed as the legal slave trade was abolished in 1808 and demand for slave labor in the South expanded. Attitudes such as expressed by Jefferson in Thomas Jefferson on Indians and Blacks, 1787 furthered the notion that as a race they were inferior in intelligence and ability. Even those who were free and living in the North faced racism and obstacles.
For women, the situation was better but her rights were not equal to man’s nor, as Zagarri points out, were they even defined the same way. Her rights were nonpolitical and defined in her duties to society. The fact that it was recognized that a woman had rights was a step in the right direction and, as Lewis noted, women were no longer seen as man’s bane but the means by which a man may become more virtuous.
Class distinction, a carryover from the Old World, became less important by 1820 as American society moved from the old traditions of hierarchy and status to ability and merit (Smelser). The Industrial Revolution, which would reintegrate the notion of classes, was a few decades away and in 1820 America was large enough were a man could find his own place to settle, work hard, and survive on his own. Along with this, the formation of the national identity seemed to override geographic location. Rossiter noted two points that support this thinking. First, there was consensus in political, economic, and social thought and second, men pledged allegiance to the federal nation. These two points helped create unity across the nation.
Society in Britain and most of Europe was different than in America. According British historian Roy Strong, Great Britain was at the height of its empire in the 1820s, governing a quarter of the world’s population. Underneath this empire was a rigid class structure, wealth and land concentrated in the hands of a few, and problems caused a corrupt and oppressive government. Americans “were content to define America as anti-Europe or, on certain anniversaries, anti-England” (Rossiter). Americans rejected the society and government of the Old World, the reason many of them or their forebears emigrated to America.
As to the final question, was the United States an egalitarian democracy during the period of 1776 to 1820, the evidence would point to the negative. Even though it was the most egalitarian society in Western history, as Wood asserts, it was only egalitarian for most white males. Women, African Americans, Native Americans, and other ethnic minorities experienced little or no participation in the democratic process. Events that happened during this period would also suggest that for white males it was also not egalitarian.
Shays’s Rebellion in occurred in response to the uneven administration of democracy in the Massachusetts state legislature. The United States Constitution was developed to correct an imbalance on the federal level of the power of individual states to dictate or curtail national policy. The Whiskey Rebellion occurred because the interests of western farmers were superseded by eastern merchant interests. Gabriel Prosser’s Rebellion evolved from the enslavement of African Americans who had no political power. Jefferson’s succession to the Presidency was in response to the growing concentration of federal power over states rights. The War of 1812, while not an internal war, was in a sense the final war for independence, to symbolically free Americans from the oppression of the British.
Each of these little revolutions, some successful and others not,
are much like Slaughter’s “epilogues to the American Revolution” in that
they show the pushing and pulling that was needed to shape the new nation.
Each were outgrowths of problems with equality of representation or opportunity.
In some areas today, like equal and civil rights, we are still tugging
and twisting for we have not achieved a true egalitarian democracy even
though we have the most egalitarian democracy.
Sources:
Morton Borden, Parties and Politics in the early Republic, 1789-1815 (Wheeling, IL, Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1967).
Richard D. Brown, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760-1791, second edition (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000).
Edmund S. Morgan, The Birth of the Republic, 1763-89, third edition (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986).
Marshall Smelser, The Democratic Republic, 1801-1815 (Prospect Heights, IL, Waveland Press, Inc., 1992).
Roy Strong, The Story of Britain, A People’s History (London, Pimlico, 1998)
Sean Wilentz, Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848 (Lexington,
MA, D.C. Heath and Company, 1992).