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260 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754%u20131800He%u00a0believed in the %u201cimprovability of the human race%u201d and deplored the corruption and social divisions that threatened its progress. Having seen the poverty of laborers in British factories, Jefferson doubted that wageworkers had the economic and political independence needed to sustain a republican polity.Jefferson therefore set his democratic vision of America in a society of independent yeomen farm families. %u201cThose who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God,%u201d he wrote. The grain and meat from their homesteads would feed European nations, which %u201cwould manufacture and send us in exchange our clothes and other comforts.%u201d Jefferson%u2019s notion of an international division of labor resembled that proposed by Scottish economist Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776).Turmoil in Europe brought Jefferson%u2019s vision closer to reality. The French Revolution began in 1789; four years later, the First French Republic went to war against a British-led coalition of monarchies. As fighting disrupted European farming, wheat prices leaped from 5 to 8 shillings a bushel and remained high for twenty years, bringing substantial profits to Chesapeake and Middle Atlantic farmers. %u201cOur farmers have never experienced such prosperity,%u201d remarked one observer. Simultaneously, a boom in the export of raw cotton, fueled by the invention of the cotton gin and the mechanization of cloth production in Britain, boosted the economies of Georgia and South Carolina. As Jefferson had hoped, European markets brought prosperity to American agriculture.The French Revolution Divides AmericansAmerican merchants profited even more handsomely from the war between France and Great Britain. In 1793, President Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, allowing U.S. citizens to trade with all belligerents. As neutral carriers, American merchant ships claimed a right to pass through Britain%u2019s naval blockade of French ports, and American firms quickly took over the lucrative sugar trade between France and its West Indian islands. Commercial earnings rose spectacularly, averaging $20 million annually in the 1790s%u2014twice the value of cotton and tobacco exports. As the American merchant fleet increased from 355,000 tons in 1790 to 1.1 million tons in 1808, northern shipbuilders and merchants provided work for thousands of shipwrights, sailmakers, dockhands, and seamen. Carpenters, masons, and cabinetmakers in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia easily found work building warehouses and fashionable %u201cFederal-style%u201d town houses for newly affluent merchants.Ideological Politics As Americans profited from Europe%u2019s struggles, they argued passionately over its ideologies. Most Americans had welcomed the French Revolution (1789%u20131799) because it began by abolishing feudalism and establishing a constitutional monarchy. The creation of the First French Republic (1792%u20131804) was more controversial. Many Americans embraced the democratic ideology of the radical Jacobins, forming political clubs and beginning to address one another as %u201ccitizen%u201d to declare their shared values. However, Americans with strong religious beliefs condemned the new French government for closing Christian churches and promoting a rational religion based on %u201cnatural morality.%u201d And for many, the Reign of Terror (1793%u20131794) offered proof that the revolution had gone too far. Fearing social revolution at home, wealthy Americans condemned revolutionary leader Robespierre and his followers for executing King Louis XVI and three thousand aristocrats.Their fears were well founded, because Hamilton%u2019s economic policies quickly sparked a domestic insurgency. In 1794, western Pennsylvania farmers mounted the so-called Whiskey Rebellion to protest Hamilton%u2019s excise tax on spirits (see %u201cAP%u00ae Working with Evidence,%u201d pp. 286%u2013290). This tax had cut demand for the corn whiskey the farmers distilled and bartered for eastern manufactures. Like the Sons of Liberty in 1765 and the Shaysites in 1786, the Whiskey Rebels attacked the tax collectors who sent the farmers%u2019 hard-earned money to a distant government. Protesters waved banners proclaiming the skills & processesCOMPARISONHow did Jefferson%u2019s idea of an agrarian republic differ from the economic vision put forward by Alexander Hamilton?Proclamation of NeutralityA proclamation issued by President George Washington in 1793, allowing U.S. citizens to trade with all belligerents in the war between France and Great Britain.skills & processesCAUSATIONHow did the French Revolution challenge the United States in domestic and foreign policy?exam tipThe impact of war between Britain and France on the economy, politics, and foreign policy of the United States is important to know on the AP%u00ae exam.French RevolutionA revolution in France (1789%u20131799) that was initially welcomed by most Americans because it began by abolishing feudalism and establishing a constitutional monarchy, but eventually came to seem too radical to many.Whiskey RebellionA 1794 uprising by farmers in western Pennsylvania in response to enforcement of an unpopular excise tax on whiskey.%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. 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