Empire of Liberty the Oxford History of the United States David M
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Empire of Liberty The Oxford History of the United States David M. Kennedy, General Editor robert middlekauff THE GLORIOUS CAUSE The American Revolution, 1763–1789 gordon s. wood EMPIRE OF LIBERTY A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 daniel walker howe WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 james m. mcpherson BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM The Civil War Era david m. kennedy FREEDOM FROM FEAR The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 james t. patterson GRAND EXPECTATIONS The United States, 1945–1974 james t. patterson RESTLESS GIANT The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore george c. herring FROM COLONY TO SUPERPOWER U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 EMPIRE OF LIBERTY A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 GORDON S. WOOD 1 2009 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offi ces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wood, Gordon S. Empire of liberty : a history of the early Republic, 1789–1815 / Gordon S. Wood. p. cm. — (Oxford history of the United States) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-503914-6 1. United States—Civilization—1783–1865. 2. United States—Politics and government—1789–1815. I. Title. E310.W87 2009 973.4—dc22 2009010762 123456789 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper To My Family This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments A project that has gone on as long as this one acquires a large number of debts, so many that it is dangerous to list any for fear of leaving someone out. For institutional support I am indebted to the Woodrow Wilson Center and the Huntington Library, both of which offered time off from teaching to work on the book. In addition, my home institution, Brown University, gave me several leaves that allowed me opportunities to do research and writing. My students, both graduate and undergraduate, have been a continual source of stimulation, mainly by compelling me to clarify my ideas and arguments. A number of colleagues have read portions of the manuscript— Michael Les Benedict, Steven Calabresi, Robert Gross, Bruce Mann, R. Kent Newmyer, and Steve Presser—and I am deeply indebted for their aid and corrections. Several friends suffered through the entire long manuscript—Richard Buel Jr., Patrick T. Conley, and Joanne Free- man—and I am eternally grateful for their taking on the task and for their helpful comments. Pat Conley in particular brought to bear on the manuscript not only his rich historical knowledge but as well a keen edi- torial eye for typos and other such errors. The editor of the Oxford His- tory of the United States series, David Kennedy, offered very sensible advice, and I thank him for overseeing the whole project. The Oxford editor, Susan Ferber, has a good eye and ear for writing and made many valuable suggestions. My thanks also to the incomparable copy editor, India Cooper. Of course, in the end I am responsible for any errors that remain. viii acknowledgments Since this book sums up a great deal of what I have learned about the early Republic over my entire career, I am deeply indebted to the many people who have helped me in one way or another over the past half cen- tury. But I owe the greatest debt to my wife, Louise, who has been editor and soulmate through the whole period. Contents List of Maps, xi Editor’s Introduction, xiii Abbreviations Used in Citations, xvii Introduction: Rip Van Winkle’s America, 1 1. Experiment in Republicanism, 5 2. A Monarchical Republic, 53 3. The Federalist Program, 95 4. The Emergence of the Jeffersonian Republican Party, 140 5. The French Revolution in America, 174 6. John Adams and the Few and the Many, 209 7. The Crisis of 1798–1799, 239 8. The Jeffersonian Revolution of 1800, 276 9. Republican Society, 315 10. The Jeffersonian West, 357 11. Law and an Independent Judiciary, 400 12. Chief Justice John Marshall and the Origins of Judicial Review, 433 13. Republican Reforms, 469 14. Between Slavery and Freedom, 508 15. The Rising Glory of America, 543 16. Republican Religion, 576 x contents 17. Republican Diplomacy, 620 18. The War of 1812, 659 19. A World Within Themselves, 701 Bibliographical Essay, 739 Index, 753 Maps The Treaty of Greenville, 132 The United States, 1803–1807, 360 Average Time-Lag for Public Information from Philadelphia, 1790, 480 Average Time-Lag for Public Information from Philadelphia, 1817, 480 The Mediterranean and the Barbary Pirates, 638 The War of 1812—Major Campaigns, 678 The Treaty of Fort Jackson, 688 This page intentionally left blank Editor’s Introduction Gordon S. Wood’s Empire of Liberty takes its place in the Oxford History of the United States between two other notable volumes: Robert Mid- dlekauff’s The Glorious Cause, which masterfully covers the Revolution- ary War era that immediately preceded the period covered here, and Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought, which vividly evokes the cultural ferment and technological transformations that marked the years between the conclusion of the War of 1812 and the end of the Mexi- can War in 1848. The present volume addresses the astonishingly volatile, protean moment that lay between the achievement of national indepen- dence and the emergence of a swiftly maturing mass democracy and modern economy in the Jacksonian Era. The two and a half decades bracketed by the signing of the Constitu- tion in 1788 and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in 1815, which ended the War of 1812, constituted one of the most precarious and consequential passages in American history. As the period opened, some four million Americans, one-fi fth of them black slaves, dwelled between the Atlantic seaboard and the Appalachians, many of them itching to spill over the mountain crest into the untamed interior. They inhabited a new nation struggling to establish itself on a continent still coveted by hostile impe- rial powers, and still seething with Indians ever more determined to resist white encroachment. Their governments were founded on inspiring but untested political principles. They aspired to shape a society modeled on its European, especially English, antecedents, and yet unlike any seen before. Few seasons in American history have been pregnant with more momentous uncertainties. xiv editor’s introduction Usually referred to as the “early national period,” the era was clamor- ously contentious, urgently creative, and teeming with possibilities for failure. To the men and women who lived though that time, the fate of their fl edgling republic was by no means secure, and the character of their communities was disconcertingly labile. History offered little guid- ance as to what the future might hold for a polyglot, restless, self-govern- ing, and assertive people. They were rebellious by nature, rootless by circumstance, and ravenous to possess the vast territories that beckoned to their westward. History’s shores are littered with the wreckage of nascent nations that foundered before they could grow to stable maturity. Why should the fragile American ship of state, launched in 1776 and relaunched in 1788, be expected to enjoy a happier fate? In little more than a decade, the American people had thrown off the British yoke and jettisoned the Arti- cles of Confederation—a record of bellicose lawbreaking and political inconstancy that gave scant promise of their ability to sustain viable gov- ernments or even a coherent and orderly society. Yet somehow those mercurial and sometimes irascible Americans managed to lay the foundations of a resilient democratic political system that has endured for more than two centuries. The story of that remark- able and in many ways improbable accomplishment lies at the heart of this book. In a series of admirably lucid chapters, Gordon Wood explains the formative origins of the nation’s major governmental institutions and political practices. His account of the ways in which Congress evolved the protocols and procedures that would allow it to make law for a diverse and footloose people is particularly instructive. His analyses of the peculiar characteristics of American law, the role of the federal and state judiciaries, and the development of the signal doctrine of judicial review are exemplary, as is his deft discussion of the role of political par- ties—or “factions,” as contemporaries called them—in determining the young republic’s political destiny. So too is his analysis of the novel insti- tution of the presidency, a tale in which George Washington fi gures prominently. Washington, along with Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, is also a central character in Wood’s trenchant portrayal of the principles that guided America’s earli- est foreign policies, leaving precedents that would inform American diplomacy ever after. But Empire of Liberty’s deepest subject is not simply the formal politi- cal system that Americans crafted in their fi rst years of nationhood.