The opening chapter in Sean Wilentz\u2019s The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln<\/i> offers a description of the general state of the colonies in the 1770s. Throughout the chapter, Wilentz establishes his central argument that as a result of the Revolutionary War, Americans became enthralled with the idea of democracy. In particular, patriotism and democracy, two influential ideals that emerged during the Revolutionary War, inspired many people of middle class status to become involved in the political process. Wilentz notes that, \u201cThe Revolution\u2019s democratic impact forever changed the context of American politics and culture and brought ordinary Americans into public and political life, which fundamentally altered how they perceived themselves and each other\u201d (11). Wilentz goes on to categorize one example of this newfound middleclass political involve as being Shays Rebellion of 1786. In response to overbearing financial policies imposed on middle class workers, Daniel Shays led a group of similar working-class people to revolt and interfere with the local court system. While this example displayed the unregulated nature of democracy, Shays ability to create a formidable uprising at the grassroots level clearly shows the impact that even working class people had during this time.<\/p>\n

While colonial political power extended to the common white man and wasn\u2019t left solely to aristocrats, there certainly existed a divide between the northern and southern colonies. As Olivia highlights in her blog post entitled \u201cThe Revolutionary War as a Precursor to the Civil War?\u201d the rift between the two sides was clearly attributed to slavery. As we discussed in class yesterday, however, it is possible that other factors may have been at play during early colonial independence that formulated the division between the two regions. Although southern delegates eventually were allowed to continue slavery under the education, a source of division between the two sides could also be attributed to the Revolutionary War\u2019s key events occurring primarily in the north. For example, while Wilientz highlights the increased democratic processes that began to take shape in everyday colonial life after the Revolutionary War in the north, similar events in the south were not recounted. While there most likely are examples of the increased sentiments of democracy seen in the south as well, the lack of evidence in Wilentz\u2019s text begs the question as to whether a grassroots uprising like Shays Rebellion would have had the same effect in the south. If not, one could make the argument that the ideals of democracy did not permeate as deeply in southern colonies as they did in the north which, in addition to their varying opinions of slavery, would further divide the two sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The opening chapter in Sean Wilentz\u2019s The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln offers a description of the general state of the colonies in the 1770s. Throughout the chapter, Wilentz establishes his central argument that as a result of the Revolutionary War, Americans became enthralled with the idea of democracy. In particular, patriotism and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Early Division Between the North and South”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[169,218,227,231,236],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-north","tag-sean-wilentz","tag-shays-rebellion","tag-slavery","tag-south"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his141-spring2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}