-The effects of rapid western growth
-Early nineteenth-century religion
-The socially excluded

[SLIDE 1]

Jefferson won a second term by a landslide in the election of 1804 against Federalist Charles Pinckney. The economy under Jefferson had continued to grow, and the Federalists had trouble coming up with a viable platform with which to defeat him. Opportunity beckoned from the west, and white men were happily able to seek their fortunes in the new territory. So many young people flocked to the western territories of Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Louisiana Territory, that the local infrastructures couldn't handle them, and the economies of the older areas suffered as well. Lack of transportation and geographic isolation inhibited the trade that Jefferson encouraged, so western economies became localized, unable to trade much with the outside. Local economies were fed by newcomers arriving with little and ready to purchase what was handmade or produced locally. If the number of newcomers slowed, the local economy collapsed. The large numbers of newcomers also brought social stresses as people of different ethnic, national, regional, and religious backgrounds converged.

[SLIDE 2]

From Jefferson's personal documents discovered after his death, we can see that he was dreaming of an Empire of Liberty before the Revolution was even finished. He had wanted westward expansion all along. The transfer of land from weak Spain to powerful France had nearly dashed his hopes until France proved happy to unload the territory in exchange for cash. When the land transfer was threatened, Jefferson secretly sought Congressional appropriations for intelligence gathering. 

[SLIDE 3]

Alongside new social challenges came two opposing religious viewpoints. Evangelicalism was emotional and literal, deriving its inspiration from received tradition. Rationalism, at the liberal end of the spectrum, placed reason as the arbiter of truth. 

[SLIDE 4]

Men like Jefferson shunned organized religion for distorting the plain religious truth. Jefferson edited his Bible to eliminate the supernatural and focus on history and morality. For his part, Adams remained a Congregationalist but, like others, moved the church away from its Puritan roots into a more rational form. Within Congregationalism there emerged a particularly rational stream that denied the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. This was Unitarianism, which developed immediately before and after the years of the Revolution.

[SLIDE 5]

Meanwhile in the unsettled conditions of the west, a more emotional type of religion was gaining sway. The social insecurity in the west was receptive to the security preached by evangelicalism. Conversion brought redemption and certitude in an unsettled environment. This new wave of evangelicalism emphasized the importance of Christian community, which helped followers create community and cohesion where there was none. At that time, Evangelicalism was the dominant religious form in the west.

[SLIDE 6]

Not everyone benefited from the opportunities brought by westward expansion. African Americans had an unequal place in Jefferson's vision of America. Jefferson believed Africans were racially inferior, and he wrote that blacks and whites should not live together. In fact, he was interested in projects to send black people back to Africa. And yet, after the death of his wife, Jefferson is believed to have fathered a number of children with his slave, Sally Hemings, with whom he seems to have had an affectionate relationship. These facts highlight the contradictions in the man and in society as a whole. At the time, some plantation owners began to see slavery as unprofitable, even when they didn't see it as immoral. In some places, laws regulating black behavior were relaxing.

[SLIDE 7]

In Virginia, a blacksmith by the name of Gabriel was owned by Thomas Prosser and allowed to hire himself out for wages and learn to read and write. He learned of the Saint-Domingue slave revolt led by Toussaint L'Ouverture and was both inspired by and disillusioned with Republican talk of liberty and opportunity. Together with two white men and a number of slaves, he launched an armed rebellion. He expected some white people with Republican principles to join his rebellion to launch a better Virginia. Someone betrayed their plans, and the rebellion failed. It led to a wave of new restrictions on black freemen and slaves alike. This meant that the promise of Jefferson's America failed to extend to most African Americans.

[SLIDE 8]

As a reaction against exclusion, some African Americans began to form their own cultural institutions. Growing tensions between white and free black Methodists in Philadelphia led former slave Richard Allan to form a church for black Americans. Two years later he became the first black Methodist deacon, but tensions continued to grow and he broke with the Methodist Church to form his own AME Church as an independent African American denomination.

James Forten is an example of a successful African American businessman. Forten was a free-born African American, who served in the navy in the American war for independence. With his naval experience, he started a sail-making venture in Philadelphia and became an important employer of both black and white workers. He jointed with other African American entrepreneurs to give other business hopefuls a leg up. With his wealth and social prominence, he worked for civil rights for African Americans and the abolition of slavery. Forten was opposed to colonizing efforts designed to send black Americans to Africa. Paul Cuffe was born into a multiracial Quaker family: his mother was Indian and father African. Having developed a shipping empire, trading mainly with Britain, he became involved in the effort to build up Freetown, later called Sierra Leone. 

[SLIDE 9]

Jefferson's views on Native Americans, if not flattering, were at least an improvement over his attitude toward African Americans. While he believed Native Americans to be savages, he thought they were racially capable of living among Europeans and becoming like them. This is a process known as "acculturation," or taking on some of the attributes of another culture. Jefferson wanted to encourage Indians to adopt white culture, and his policies reflect that goal. He created government-owned trading posts to make manufactured goods available to Indians and convince them of the superiority of white culture. This was supposed to convince them to abandon Indian life in favor of European-American ways. In the meantime, until they were ready to be mature voting citizens, Indians needed the US Senate and the US Army to watch over their rights and their treaties, a paternalistic perspective that subjected Indian populations to arbitrary abuse.

[SLIDE 10]

At the same time, some Native individuals were prospering quite well. The Creek and Cherokee tribes adapted and were succeeding. White settlers were not happy to deal with powerful Indian groups in their midst. Jefferson adapted, too, and proposed relocating Indians within the U.S. states to Indian reservations in the new territory of Louisiana. He then encouraged Indians to leave.