The Agrarian Republic

The agrarian republicanism was what Jefferson was building. A nation would take care of itself, depend on itself, this began in the nineteenth century when Jefferson became president. The forces that threatened the agrarian republic were the people and the government. The people that should inhabit the agrarian republic were the kind and gentle; people who would not depend on others but on the land itself. The central government of this republic would have little power and would be controlled by its people. It would also follow its own laws. The governments of the states would be controlled and conducted among the people. They would be able to create their own laws and destroy the ones made they thought unworthy. The first issue that threatened the survival of agrarian republic was the government. The federalist from the beginning had controlled the government and Jefferson was the first president that was an anti-federalist. He had many who followed him but the government was not a democracy as people thought. The second issue was slavery. Jefferson wanted to keep slavery enact because the slaves worked the farms and kept food supplies at their highest and this would help with the American living off of their own land. The Tallmadge amendment was something that would cause an issue because it was against slavery unless a crime was committed. The committer would be placed into slavery and its child(s) should be freed at the age of twenty-five years. The forces that threatened the agrarian republic were the central and the states governments. The government had never been a democracy as it claimed. It used its powers to control what the states did. It even did things that were against their laws, which Jefferson was against. The state governments and central government would buy goods from other countries, depending on them things, which came at a price. Jefferson did not want this. The government began to get into other countries affairs and this would cause trouble within America.

The society and the government threatened everything Jefferson was creating and had created. In the early nineteenth century, these were the things and the people that filled him with fear for the survival of his country.

Zebulon Peterson, Jr. September 29, 2009 AP History The Agrarian Republic