APUSH: Topic 3.12 Movement in the Early Republic

APUSH: Topic 3.12 Movement in the Early Republic

1. As increasing numbers of migrants from North America and other parts of the world continued to move westward, frontier cultures that had emerged in the colonial period continued to grow, fueling social, political, and ethnic tensions.

   • Kentucky and Tennessee had been filling up with squatters
     • They had attempted to form the state of Franklin, but Congress rejected it to maintain control of the process
     • squatters were often Scots-Irish and other poor immigrants, while the speculators tended to be English descendants
   • speculators bought up huge tracts, which put them into conflict with the squatters (in Ohio as well)
   • Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut were fighting over conflicting land claims out west until they ceded all land claims to the national government
     • The role of Western Land Claims in the history of the United States of America. ... These so-called "landed" states had a great potential advantage over the six ... rich lands directly across the mountains until the new federal government was in placeThe role of Western Land Claims in the history of the United States of America. ... These so-called "landed" states had a great potential advantage over the six ... rich lands directly across the mountains until the new federal government was in place
   • Shays’ Rebellion and Whiskey Rebellion are both frontier rebellions, defying political controls back east (many frontiersmen were Scots-Irish, who resented authority of almost any kind, but they were particularly hostile to “revenue hounds”)
   • Yazoo land fraud (Georgia sold huge tracts of land it may not have owned, sometimes multiple times; resolved by Fletcher v. Peck)
     • Pine-Barrens scandal sold three times the amount of land that was available [past 1800, but this one may be aimed at the Louisiana Purchase, then the Wilkinson/Burr secessionist plot]

2. The expansion of slavery in the deep South and adjacent western lands and rising antislavery sentiment began to create distinctive regional attitudes toward the institution

   • The Articles granted the southern states control over the Old Southwest – they spread slavery rapidly into Alabama and Mississippi
     • The U.S. Congress, in April 1798, created the Mississippi Territory out of lands
     • The population grew so rapidly in the Alabama Territory (from 1,250 residents in
   • The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 banished slavery from the Great Lakes states
     • An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, 1787
     • Considered one of the most important legislative acts of the Confederation Congress, the Northwest Ordinance also protected civil liberties and outlawed slavery in the new territories.
   • The north had begun abolishing slavery after independence, and never had a substantial need for slavery in the first place
     • A timeline of significant events concerning slavery, the abolitionist movement and the ... establish the Free African Society in Philadelphia, the first independent black
     • Grimke, Quaker abolitionists from a prominent South Carolina family, begin
   • the cotton gin would accelerate the profitability of slavery
     • While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton
   • the North became an area of immigrants, who provided the cheap labor supply as the North industrialized
     • The Rise of Industrial America (1876-1900) timeline covers westward expansion, immigration, urbanization, industrialization, labor and railroad with primary sources
     • Significantly, bringing even remote parts of the country into a national market economy. ... American society became more diverse than ever before.
   • the Missouri Compromise revealed how far apart they were
     • The Missouri Compromise, passed in 1820, admitted Missouri to the Union as a ... balance that currently existed between slave and free states in the Union.

3. Various American Indian groups repeatedly evaluated and adjusted their alliances with Europeans, other tribes, and the U.S., seeking to limit migration of white settlers and maintain control of tribal lands and natural resources. British alliances with American Indians contributed to tensions between the U.S. and Britain.

   • British alliance for Native Americans turned disastrous due to the Revolutionary War (and again as a result of War of 1812)
   • Native American groups rejected those claims, but Americans forced Iroquois to hand over large sections of New York and Pennsylvania over to them; alcohol and bribes drove the Iroquois into smaller and smaller areas
   • Same thing happened in Ohio, but Native Americans refused to accept the outcomes; Little Turtle and the Western Confederacy defeated not one, but two, American armies
   • British had been arming Native Americans; Jay’s Treaty got them to agree to sto
   • Native American groups often responded with hostility towards those who had assimilated, and forced them out
   • Handsome Lake, on the other hand, blended animism with Christian elements (heaven, hell, personal morality) – but Red Jacket rejected him, splitting the Senecas in half