Religion, race and money. Some of these issues are still as divisive today as they were when the nation was first founded. Why is that? In the beginning of the school year, I asked you to go beyond simply gathering information concerning the past. We had to analyze it, synthesize it, and ultimately evaluate it. This requires that we try to understand the relationships, patterns and lessons of history. Apply that theorem here. Is there a pattern to the relationship between government power and religious authority? If the idea of race is socially constructed, is it possible for individuals to reduce and eliminate it? Is class division an inherent by product of capitalism? Think about it and share your thoughts with me here on the blog.
SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE (227) Religion. It is one of the basic cornerstones of society, affecting all people, all faiths, whether they believe or not. But this was even more true in the revolutionary era. Redefining the relationships between old authorities and new ones meant breaking with traditions. Your text explains that many Americans were afraid of religious oppression. That dances around the issue. Remember that many of the colonies were founded as homes for religious groups. Now that they were all working together in one common government for the first time, the real threat is not persecution of the individual, but the lack of tolerance from one state to another. Click here for a good explanation of the separation of church and state in the early republic.
SLAVERY UNDER ATTACK (229) Racism. Slavery. Profit. All three were tied together in this Confederation era. Ending the slave trade once the war was over was almost a given. Now the question was, where to go from here? It was an easy question for Quakers, who were die-hard abolitionists. It was harder for Jefferson. He was deeply conflicted, but put his words to pen in the Notes on the State of Virginia where he proclaimed,
Deep rooted prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections, by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made; and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one or the other race.
Not to cheery, hm? Jefferson goes on to explain more of his thoughts on the differences between the races here. But here’s the main point: it wasn’t just slavery that Jefferson was worried about. It was racism – something that he also believed in – that the white race was superior. In this, he is like Abraham Lincoln.
The real danger would come with the invention of the cotton gin and the expansion to the black, fertile soil regions of the deep South. That was just around the bend – in the 1790′s and early 1800′s.
POLITICS AND THE ECONOMY (230) A graph can say a lot of things. Look at the one on the top of page 231. What does it say? What does it mean? Those are two fundamental questions of historical investigation. Look at the rises and falls and read the stories there – but don’t just stop there. Now consider regions, consider occupations, and consider political motives and decisions. Those red and blue lines tell a lot. Your text points out the main problems: price and wage inflation, skyrocketing taxation (local now, not foreign), and mushrooming debt. If you can understand the causes of those three, you can begin to understand the issues the founders were facing in the Confederation era. So, if there were economic causes of the revolution, was it worth it? Taxes were much higher now than during the British days. Currency was almost worthless, because so much was being printed. What was the solution? As you can see, a new government is needed. Things just weren’t working all that well in the 1780′s.
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