American History
The history of liberal America has many significant events and figures that paved the path for the development of modern liberalism in the United States. The country has grown out of struggle and aspiration for a better future. The notorious American dream has been the driving power of any changes that occurred in the United States starting from the day of signing of the Declaration of Independence. History of human civilization contains numerous examples of ideological struggles. Wars and revolutions always bring significant changes to the society marking the new era in its development. Although such processes are very rough and sometimes devastating, their influence on the course of humanity’s development cannot be denied. The United States did not evaded the period of revolutionary changes either.
The Civil War marked the beginning of the new era in the American history. It became a crucial point in the development of the nation’s social structure. The subsequent Reconstruction has become the turning point of the US history. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared immediate and irreversible freedom for all slaves in the United States paving the way for the eventual abolition of American slavery. The freedom given to the black slaves by the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution conditioned the development of the new U.S. social policy.
Starting as the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, the Civil War emphasized the necessity of change in the US policy and the importance of finding a compromise. This paper will examine two essays – “The Fears of the Federalists” by Linda Kerber and “The Fears of the Jeffersonian Republicans” by Drew McCoy that focus on the pre-war state of the United States in order to understand what the causes that led to the conflict were and what were the major issues in the US politics that indicated the need for change.
In the beginning of the 18th century, to the Federalists the American society was torn by internal contradiction despite the seeming stability and prosperity. It was a common Federalist fear that the Jeffersonians were insufficiently conscious of the precariousness of revolutionary accomplishments. At the same time, Jefferson emphasized the moral and political advantages of America’s social opportunity that far outweighed narrowly economic considerations. While Federalists had the vision that indicated the need for change, Jeffersonians focused on the seeming prosperity that appeared to be hollow and endangered by the inner socio-political issues at more detailed look.
The major effort of Thomas Jefferson was put in developing superiority of the Republican party of the Federalists as their government and politics appeared old and corrupted to him and his supporters. However, fortifying the Republican’s positions on the political arena, Jefferson pursued the ideas of a peaceful predominantly agricultural republic that actually demanded a tenaciously expansive foreign policy – a foreign policy that ultimately endangered both the peace and the agricultural character of the young republic.
After the Revolution, the ambivalence persisted through the early years of the national experience. The Federalists characteristically searched the American social order to find the stability that would justify the Revolution; for the same purpose the Democrats searched it to find flexibility, and the Jeffersonians endorsed flexibility, unpredictability, open-endedness. The Federalist approach came out of appreciation of the forces that were operating to increase the anxieties of American life. The contradictions between the two parties have inevitably led the United States to military conflict that revealed even more contradictions and misleading political directions and developed into the Civil War.
The aftermath of the Civil War could be evaluated from two different perspectives. The Thirteenth Amendment brought confusion into the masses. Freed black people did not know what to do with their newly acquired freedom and were surrounded by white hostile people who did not know how to treat their former slaves. The Reconstruction implemented by Congress aimed at developing means for reorganizing the Southern states in order to provide conditions in which black and white people could live together peacefully. However, the South did not welcome the Reconstruction and perceived it rather like a vengeful mean to humiliate the Southern states. Therefore, the Southern Democrats and Conservatives did everything they could making the exercise of freedom challenging for former slaves.
Despite that directions of the development presented by the Federalists and the Jeffersonians seemed different and even opposite in some aspects, a closer look gives us a notion that both parties wanted the same in general. However, the contradictory methods that were used to accomplish the goals of the parties sparked the conflict that has led to the Civil War and the Reconstruction later. The discrepancies in the domestic policy of the US and further conflict showed that sometimes a rational compromise could be a better option.
Bibliography
McCoy, Drew R. The elusive Republic: political economy in Jeffersonian America. Chapel Hill: published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina press, 1980.
Kerber, Linda K. Federalists in Dissent: Imagery and Ideology in Jeffersonian America. Ithaca [N.Y.]: Cornell University Press, 1970.
