7 Hammering Out a Federal Republic

1787–1820

The new republic, formed with the ratification of the Constitution, wrestled with the meaning of the Revolution. What did it mean to be a citizen when Americans were no longer subjects of a distant monarch? How should they behave? What might republican politics look like? For some, fine clothes and elaborate titles for officeholders bespoke dangerous aristocratic pretensions. For others, like Federalist Fisher Ames, egalitarianism threatened to plunge the new nation into “the mire of a democracy, which pollutes the morals of citizens before it swallows up their liberties.” In many ways, the first decade under the Constitution was about coming to terms with conflicting interpretations of the Revolution’s legacy.

The sources in this chapter highlight the conflicts that Americans faced as they struggled to understand the new political order they had created. The first two documents illustrate some of the varying political visions that emerged, while the third highlights one of the flashpoints of the 1790s: France’s alleged influence over American politics. The remaining sources address the young republic’s geographical expansion and the other major foreign policy crisis of this early period: the War of 1812. As we see here, this conflict also drove domestic politics, ultimately crushing New England Federalists and ushering in an era of submerged political drama.