American History - Abolitionist Beginnings

As early as the late seventeenth century, the ethics of slavery were being debated in what would become the United States.  As the practice shifted from something more akin to indentured servitude to lifelong enslavement, passed down from one generation to the next, some began to question whether such human bondage should exist at all.  Such debate was not born out of nothing, for at the time increasing raids by the Barbary States of North Africa from Italy north to Iceland were dooming many Europeans to a life of enslavement, creating a new found abhorrence which over time spread beyond the confines of European heritage.  The first to broadly question slavery, other than those being enslaves obviously, in what is today is the United States, were the Quakers of Pennsylvania, though at first it was only a few, with most households owning a slave or two.  However, these ideas began to rapidly spread and be debated amongst intellectuals in Pennsylvania and New England by the early eighteenth century, and by the middle of the century many Quakers not just freeing their slaves, but also actively campaigning against it. 

In 1733, the newly created colony of Georgia became the first to outright ban slavery.  However, it was not done due to an overt hostility towards the practice itself.  Rather, the social reformist founders of the colony viewed it as a place for the poor of Britian to enrich themselves, and therefore slaves would only represent unneeded competition for their labor, creating a situation where the rich could exploit the poor just as they had back in Britain.  Ultimately, this experiment failed.  Settlers from South Carolina, eager to move south into Georgia, bringing their slaves with them, brought their grievances to the British Parliament, who eventually sided against the social reformers, forcing Georgia to allow slavery in 1750.

Though the first bastion against slavery failed, support against it continued to grow in New England and Pennsylvania, slowly spreading beyond the Quakers.  For many of the people in these colonies, the question was more academic compared to the other colonies, many households not having slaves or having only a few slaves, with most slaves working as servants, laborers, and artisans.  As slaves in these states were freed, they established small communities, though in most cases they were not viewed as equals, not allowed to own property, and were not allowed to vote, though they were legally protected from kidnapping and re-enslavement.  As a result, these communities often became tight knit, with their members doing similar jobs to those they had done while still slaves.  By 1771, the colonial assembly of Massachusetts attempted to outlaw the importation or purchase of slaves, but it was vetoed by the colony’s royal governor.

In many ways, the start of the American Revolution turned the sparks of the abolitionist movement into full on flames.  For many, it was hard to defend fighting for one’s own freedoms, while actively taking it from others in the worst way possible.  Abolitionist societies appeared in most states, and in some even managed to obtain significant political power.  Surprisingly, these abolitionist movements found unexpected allies in many of the southern states, the wealthy old money plantation owners.  Working together, they convinced every state to pass laws barring the importation of slaves both internationally and from other states.  However, while it would be nice to imagine that these rich slave owning asshats were trying to do good, in truth they were just trying to line their own pockets.  The breeding of slaves was beginning to become big business, but it was being undercut by imported slaves, hence the want for a ban.  By the end of the war, as the political winds shifted and demand for slave labor increased, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia lifted their bans, aiding in the further growth of breeding slaves as a business in Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware, which is exactly as fucking terrible as it sounds. 

In the meantime, the abolitionist organizations were pushing for less questionable successes further north.  When the Vermont Republic declared its independence in 1777, it also declared slavery to be illegal, forcing anyone who had slaves to leave.  In 1780, Pennsylvania passed a law making it so that all children born to slaves would be free, a shitty gradual abolition compromise which resulted in slavery remaining in the state until 1847.  Connecticut and Rhode Island followed suit in 1784, with slavery existing within their borders until 1848 and 1842 respectively.  Massachusetts, went a different route, with a court case in 1783 declaring slavery to be illegal and all slaves being freed immediately, even though this angered the small group of owners, who felt their property was being stolen from them, which again, is exactly as shitty as it sounds.  New Hampshire went an even different route, having very few slaves, rather than passing a law or waiting for a court ruling, they just kind of let slavery fade away, though the last handful of slaves were not freed until 1857.  Even the federal government got into the action.  When the Northwest Territory was created in 1787, it was declared to be a slave free territory, both to open it up to as many settlers as possible, and also as part of a compromise which allowed the southern states to retain their individual claims on the southeastern frontier.  Though not considered a significant issue prior to the American Revolution, by 1790 abolition had definitely become one, an issue which would define American politics for generations to come.        

American History - Across the Appalachians

When the American Revolution began in 1775, it was not just the start of a war for freedom, it was also the beginning of a massive land rush across the Appalachian Mountains.  Long barred from establishing significant settlements by the British, thousands of Americans rushed westward into what is today West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee to build farms, trading posts, forts, and even towns.  Despite years of harsh conflict with the natives living and claiming these territories, by the end of the war some 25,000 Americans had settled west of the Appalachians, many setting up independent governments to provide services and to see to the common defense.  The end of the American Revolution did little to mitigate the flow of settlers westward, and conflicting claims to these westward territories amongst the states threatened to further create chaos.  As a result, beginning in 1784, the federal government stepped in to try and hammer out agreements with the various native nations to re-establish peace along the frontier. 

The combination of all out war and smallpox over the past decade had devastated most of the native nations along the frontier, and the Treaty of Paris and its handing over of western territories by the British had left many native leaders feeling abandoned.  Facing increasing encroachment by American settlers, many felt their best option was to make concessions to establish peace.  However, there were also many who felt it was best to continue resisting, which was possible thanks to guns being provided from British forts along the Great Lakes and Spanish trading posts along the Mississippi River.  Both the British and Spanish saw it in their best interest to destabilize the newly formed American frontier via a long-term native guerilla conflict, with the Spanish taking the further step of barring American trade along the Mississippi, cutting off the quickest and cheapest trade route for the American settlers, and opening Florida and Louisiana to American settlement if they swore an oath of loyalty to the Spanish Empire.  As a result, some American settlers in Tennessee began secretly negotiating the possibility of seceding to join New Spain, to both reopen trade and gain better protection from native attacks, though said negotiations ultimately never succeeded.

The first group to sign a treaty with the American government was the remains of the Iroquois Confederacy in 1784, which signed away all its claims to the Ohio Country.  This was the first of many controversial land sales, which would result in the dissolution of the once mighty Iroquois Confederacy by the end of the century, its members either fleeing into Canada or absorbed into American culture and society.  This was followed by the Lenape signing away many of their claims in 1785 and moving westward.  The following year, treaties were signed with the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Chickamauga in the southeast, establishing recognized territories and promising the protection of the American government.  However, with little to no standing army, such treaties were impossible to enforce, and American settlers soon after began squatting on agreed to native lands, which swayed support more towards those native leaders calling for greater resistance. 

Significant violence first broke out in the southeast, with the war preferring factions of the Cherokee and other smaller nations launching widescale raids across the southeast frontier in the spring of 1786.  However, these raids were met by a largescale counterattack by multiple settler and state militias, forcing the Cherokee and their allies to retreat westward.  Though peace was established attacks continued, and not once for the next decade did any part of the southeast frontier know peace for long.  However, though the Cherokee won some victories, they were Pyrrhic in nature, with the Cherokee pushed further to the south and west as time went on, their settlements burned to the ground.

Unlike the Cherokee, the native nations of the northwestern frontier were much more successful in their resistance.  With many of the native people’s having allied and fought with each other before in the French and Indian War, Pontiac’s War, and the American Revolution, they were much more open to working together, and as early as 1784 many of the more militant members of these nations across the Ohio Country and Illinois Country had united under what became known as the United Indian Nations, or Northwestern Confederacy.  Supported by the British, who wished to see the creation of a native buffer state, by 1786 they were actively resisting further encroachment via raiding settlements and torturing settlers.  With little support from the states, the settler militias counterattacked, resulting in the Shawnee being pushed westward, but otherwise the natives held the line at the Ohio River, forcing a stalemate and increasingly violent guerilla warfare.  Horrified by the growing conflict, in 1787 the states surrendered their claims to the native held territory to the federal government, which established the Northwest Territory, though it realistically had no real control over the area.          

American History - The Articles of Confederation

The American victory at Yorktown heralded the beginning of the end for the Revolutionary War, though the official end would not take place for another two years as both sides hammered out what North America would look like going into the future.  With this victory, the newly minted United States needed a more formalized federal government, the creation of which of course did not go well whatsoever.  By this time, all the states had created governments with a basic similar structure; specifically a legislative branch to make laws, an executive branch headed by a governor to run things, and a judicial branch to ensure laws were enforced; established some type of bill of rights; guaranteeing things such freedom of religion, freedom of speech, trial by jury, and other such things; founded state universities and implemented reformed criminal codes, and expanded voting rights to anyone owning property within the state; that is in the vast majority of cases as long as they were born in American territory, male, white, and 21 years or older, which amounted to only about 6 percent of the total population.  However, despite all these similarities, not one of the states wanted to see a strong federal government, believing it was the surest route towards a return to tyranny.

As a result, the thirteen states agreed to the Articles of Confederation in 1781, a watered-down document which basically created a loose alliance of thirteen independent nations.  Under this government, each state had a single voting representative, nine of whom were needed to approve any laws or changes, which if such an agreement even occurred, the federal government had no ability to enforce.  The individual states set their own laws and trade policies, printed their own money, and did pretty much whatever the hell they wanted.  From the beginning they were pretty much at each other’s throats, establishing tariffs on imports from other states and arguing over claims to territories west of the Appalachians, with some states even threatening to declare war on each other.  However, all the nutless federal government managed to do in response was to move the capital three times, sell all the U.S. Navy to help pay off debts, and disband almost the entirety of the U.S. Army in order to avoid them staging a coup over unpaid wages.  About the only they thing they managed to fix was consolidating all of the claims in the Ohio Country into the Northwest Territory in 1787, though even this was only largely done to benefit the wealthy land speculators who controlled the state legislatures rather than the settlers actually in the territory.

This complete and utter chaos was a big reason the British chose to be generous when they signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783, figuring it would only be a matter of time until the whole endeavor collapsed in on itself.  In return for the new states honoring all debts incurred prior to 1775, which was a hefty amount of cheddar, the British handed over all territories west of the Mississippi River, which wasn’t a bad deal for them given they knew they would still be America’s primary trading partner, but now with zero cost overhead.  This put both the states and the federal government further into debt, and while the end of the war did end British attacks on American merchant ships, without its own navy, the number of pirate attacks increased dramatically.  To help raise money, the majority of states sold off lands seized from Loyalists during the war rather than returning it, sparking the immigration of some 80,000 Loyalists to Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Ontario.  The British used this as an excuse to retain troops in many forts along the Great Lakes, from which they sold guns to the various native nations to further destabilize the situation.  Spain, uncomfortable with the now close American presence, followed suit with the native nations of the southeast.       

If this all sounds pretty bad, don’t worry, it only got worse.  Though imports from Britian quickly returned to pre-war levels, exports fell off dramatically due to British mercantilist policies barring them from exporting directly to British colonies, and increased trade to other parts of Europe, New Spain, and even China could only do so much to make up the difference.  Since the British traders refused to accept American bank notes, this created a shortage of hard currency, which as only exacerbated by the British government demanding all debts be paid in hard currency as well.  As a result, many heavily in debt states raised property taxes and began requiring them to be paid in hard currency.  This wasn’t so bad for the well connected merchant class, but it was very difficult for the farmers in the interior, who found themselves having to pay both the merchants and their taxes using hard currency they did not have.  As a result, many went bankrupt and began to lose their farms.  Eventually, these farmers began to get thoroughly pissed off enough that they began to openly discuss a possible second revolution. 

Such was the state of events in 1786, when farmers across the interior of Massachusetts rose up in well-organized mobs, shutting down courts, burning legal documents, chasing out government officials, and seizing control of armories.  Though short-lived, what became known as Shay’s Rebellion was a wakeup call, with most states soon after passing laws to better keep the merchants from fucking over the farmers and removing the hard currency requirements for paying taxes.  However, it was too little too late in Massachusetts, and the revolt continued to spread until finally a private militia, hired by the merchants, scattered the rebels, with those not arrested fleeing to the Vermont Republic, which despite wanting to be part of the United States, was still its own nation due to New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire all claiming it as their own territory.  Though the rebels were later granted a general pardon the entire incident highlighted how close the new United States was to complete disaster.