Chapter 6 Study Outline

  1. Democratizing freedom
    1. The dream of equality; challenges to hereditary privilege, fixed status
    2. Expanding the political nation
      1. Popular engagement in public debate
      2. The new constitutions
      3. The right to vote; rolling back property qualifications
      4. One-house vs. two-house legislatures
      5. Radical patriots and conservative patriots
  2. Toward religious toleration
    1. Broadening of religious toleration
    2. The founders and religion
      1. Separating church and state
        1. Thinking behind
        2. Implementation of
      2. Jefferson and religious liberty
    3. Revolution and the churches
      1. Challenges to church authority
      2. Boost to influence of religion
  3. Defining economic freedom
    1. Toward free labor
      1. Decline of intermediate forms of unfree labor
        1. Indentured servitude
        2. Apprenticeship
      2. Causes of decline
    2. Points of consensus
      1. Excessive dependency and inequality subversive to a free republic
      2. America well-poised to foster liberty and equality
    3. Points of debate
      1. Equality of condition vs. equality of opportunity
      2. The politics of inflation
      3. Regulation of prices vs. free trade
  4. The limits of liberty
    1. Colonial loyalists
      1. Social profiles
      2. Motivations
      3. Experiences
        1. Suppression and assaults
        2. Seizure of property
        3. Banishment or voluntary departure
        4. Gradual fading of stigma
    2. The Indian's revolutions
      1. Accelerated dispossession, pre-revolutionary
      2. Wartime dilemmas and disruptions
        1. Futile efforts at neutrality
        2. Divided allegiances
        3. Losses and hardships
      3. Accelerated dispossession, post-independence
  5. Slavery and the Revolution
    1. Rhetoric of revolution; the language of slavery and freedom
      1. As metaphor for political status of colonists
      2. As direct critique of slavery
      3. Alleged hypocrisy of slaveholders crying "slavery"
    2. Obstacles to abolition
      1. Importance of slave system in the colonies
      2. Perception of slavery as basis for white freedom
      3. Conception of property rights as essential to liberty
    3. Impetus for abolition
      1. Growing debate over slavery in America
      2. Black initiatives against slavery
        1. Invocations of freedom as universal right
        2. Legal action
        3. Escape
    4. British emancipators
      1. Invitations to slaves to escape to British lines
        1. Lord Dunmore's proclamation
        2. Henry Clinton's proclamation
      2. Magnitude of slave response
      3. Long-term outcomes for slaves who escaped to British
    5. Voluntary emancipation
      1. Curbs on slave importation
      2. Upper South manumissions
      3. Abolition in northern states
    6. Emergence of free black communities
  6. Daughters of liberty
    1. Revolutionary women
    2. Limits on access to American freedom
      1. Maintenance of legal subordination of women
      2. Male supremacy as element of revolutionary thought
      3. View of women as wives and mothers, unfit for citizenship
    3. Improvements in status of women
      1. Ideology of "republican motherhood"
      2. Perception of women as trainers of citizens, meriting education
      3. Notion of "companionate marriage"
    4. Changes in structure of family life
  7. Repercussions of American independence struggle throughout Atlantic world
Last modified: Tuesday, March 1, 2011, 5:55 AM