The Birth of a New Republic(1776 – 1800)

Meeting 3

Matakuliah : G0862/American Culture and SocietyTahun : 2007

Contents

• The Birth of a Nation• Manifest Destiny: Westward Ho• American Landscape: George Caleb Bingham• Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?

The Birth of a Nation

The main cause of the Revolutionary War:

American view that they were entitled to the full democratic rights of Englishmen, while the British view that the American colonies were just colonies to be used and exploited in whatever way best suited the Great Britain.

The Revolutionary War

Constitution

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Constitution

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Manifest Destiny

Daniel BooneIs the frontiersman who led settlers across the Appalachian Mountains and into the land that later became Kentucky and Tennessee.  Born in Pennsylvania in 1734, his family moved to North Carolina when he was a boy.

Boone and others were hired by a land company to mark a trail through the Cumberland Gap in 1775.  This became the famous Wilderness Road, running from Virginia into Kentucky.  He established Fort Boonesborough later that year on the Kentucky River, and brought over his wife and daughter.

Efforts to settle the area, however, were marked by trouble with Indians.  Boone himself was captured at one point and adopted as a son by a Shawnee chief, but escaped in time to warn settlers in  Boonesborough of a planned attack by the Indians and British.  (By this time, 1778, the American Revolution was on.)

In spite of his exploits and land claims, Boone never became rich.  He worked for a time as a surveyor, and later moved to Missouri.  By the time he died in 1823, however, his fame as a frontiersman had spread worldwide.

American Landscape

American Landscape

Salad Bowl or Melting Pot