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216 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754–1800

SKILLS & PROCESSES Jefferson therefore set his democratic vision of America in a society of indepen-
dent yeomen farm families. “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of
COMPARISON God,” he wrote. The grain and meat from their homesteads would feed European
How did Jefferson’s idea of an nations, which “would manufacture and send us in exchange our clothes and other
agrarian republic differ from the comforts.” Jefferson’s notion of an international division of labor resembled that
economic vision put forward
by Alexander Hamilton? proposed by Scottish economist Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations (1776).
Turmoil in Europe brought Jefferson’s vision closer to reality. The French
Revolution began in 1789; four years later, the First French Republic (1792–1804)
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. “Our farmers have never experienced such prosperity,” 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 Americans

American merchants profited even more handsomely from the war between
Proclamation of Neutrality France and Great Britain. In 1793, President Washington issued a Proclamation of
A proclamation issued by President George Neutrality, allowing U.S. citizens to trade with all belligerents. As neutral carriers,
Washington in 1793, allowing U.S. citizens to American merchant ships claimed a right to pass through Britain’s naval blockade of
trade with all belligerents in the war between
France and Great Britain. 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 — twice the value of cotton and tobacco exports. As
EXAM TIP the American merchant fleet increased from 355,000 tons in 1790 to 1.1 million tons
The impact of conflicts in Europe on in 1808, northern shipbuilders and merchants provided work for thousands of ship-
the economy, politics, and foreign wrights, sailmakers, dockhands, and seamen. Carpenters, masons, and cabinetmakers
policy of the U.S. is important to in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia easily found work building warehouses and
®
know on the AP Exam.
fashionable “Federal-style” town houses for newly affluent merchants.
Ideological Politics As Americans profited from Europe’s struggles, they argued
French Revolution passionately over its ideologies. Most Americans had welcomed the French
A revolution in France (1789–1799) that Revolution (1789–1799) because it began by abolishing feudalism and establishing
was initially welcomed by most Americans a constitutional monarchy. The creation of the First French Republic (1792–1804)
because it began by abolishing feudalism
and establishing a constitutional monarchy, was more controversial. Many Americans embraced the democratic ideology of the
but eventually came to seem too radical to radical Jacobins, forming political clubs and beginning to address one another as
many.
“citizen” to declare their shared values. However, Americans with strong religious
SKILLS & PROCESSES beliefs condemned the new French government for closing Christian churches and
promoting a rational religion based on “natural morality.” And for many, the Reign
CONTEXTUALIZATION of Terror (1793–1794) offered proof that the revolution had gone too far. Fearing
How did the French Revolution social revolution at home, wealthy Americans condemned revolutionary leader
challenge the United States in Robespierre and his followers for executing King Louis XVI and three thousand
domestic and foreign policy?
aristocrats.
Their fears were well founded, because Hamilton’s economic policies quickly
sparked a domestic insurgency. In 1794, western Pennsylvania farmers mounted the
Whiskey Rebellion so-called Whiskey Rebellion to protest Hamilton’s excise tax on spirits (see “Thinking
A 1794 uprising by farmers in western Like a Historian,” p. 219). This tax had cut demand for the corn whiskey the farm-
Pennsylvania in response to enforcement of ers distilled and bartered for eastern manufactures. Like the Sons of Liberty in 1765
an unpopular excise tax on whiskey.
and the Shaysites in 1786, the Whiskey Rebels assailed the tax collectors who sent
the farmers’ hard-earned money to a distant government. Protesters waved banners
proclaiming the French revolutionary slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!” To deter
popular rebellion and uphold national authority, President Washington raised a mili-
tia force of 12,000 troops and dispersed the Whiskey Rebels.
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