Chapter XI
The New Capital
In 1796, Washington said he did not want to be president any more and would not be a candidate. So John Adams was elected as the second president of the United States.
In 1790, Congress decided to move the capital back to Philadelphia for a temporary period. At the same time, they decided to build a new capital, which would be called Washington DC They decided that the new capital should be built near the Potomac River because at that time that was near the center of the United States. Maryland is north of the Potomac and Virginia is south of it. They found a place that had no cities or villages in it. There were only empty fields. They brought a famous architect named L'Enfant from France to plan the new city. They told him to plan a beautiful city with wide streets and many parks. L'Enfant planned a large building that would be called the White House. This would be the place where the president lived and worked. A wide street called Pennsylvania Avenue was planned. At the other end of this street would be built the Capitol Building. This would be the place where the Senate and the House of Representatives would meet. However, before he finished his work, L'Enfant quarreled with Congress and went back to France. Benjamin Bannecker, an American Black astronomer, had to finish the plans. In 1800, President Adams and Congress went to live in Washington DC
In 1800, Thomas Jefferson was elected president. Earlier, Washington and Adams had worn a wig and very expensive clothing. Jefferson wore simple clothing, and he did not wear a wig. Jefferson talked about the need to educate children. Many schools were built. Some parents decided to send their children to school, but other parents said their children could not go to school because they had to work.
In the peace treaty after the American Revolution, England kept Canada. All the rest of the English land south of Canada was given to the United States. Later, boundaries for each of the states were fixed. Most of the land between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River was not part of any state. This area was divided into territories and very few American citizens lived in this area. Many people began to cross the mountains to live on the other side. As soon as a territory filled with people, it could become a state. In 1791, while Washington was president, Vermont became the fourteenth state. In 1792, Kentucky became the fifteenth state. In 1796, Tennessee became the sixteenth.
While Jefferson was president, Napoleon was in power in France. Napoleon told Spain that he did not like the peace treaty that had ended the French and Indian War. He said Spain must give back all of the land west of the Mississippi River that it had taken from France. Spain agreed. Because Napoleon needed money for the war he was planning, he told Jefferson that he would sell the French land west of the Mississippi to the United States for fifteen million dollars. Jefferson bought the land and the United States became twice as big as it had been.
The debate about who should be allowed to vote lasted for more than forty years. The constitution said that each state would decide who would be allowed to vote in that state. The problem was that the states had inherited the British tradition that only the rich were allowed to vote. This meant that the poor could not take the right to vote. Only the rich could give it to them. Some rich people thought that poor people would support the government more if they could vote. Over time, the amount of wealth a person had to have in order to vote was reduced so that more and more people could vote. Many new states were formed. In the new states there were almost no rich people, so they allowed all male citizens to vote. In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected president. He supported the right of poor citizens to vote. He was able to convince all of the states that poor citizens should be allowed to vote, and they have been able to vote ever since.
Jackson was the leader of the Republican-Democratic Party. He changed the name of the party to the Democratic Party, and it has had that name ever since. The Democratic Party is now more than two hundred years old. President Bill Clinton is a member of the Democratic Party. Jackson was a great friend of poor white men. He had been poor as a child. He was the first president that had been born poor. He wanted to take land from the Indians and give it to poor white men. Jackson also wanted to make it easier for poor white men to buy slaves. In 1830, Jackson and Congress passed a law saying that Indians had to go live West of the Mississippi River.
Jackson took the land of the Cherokee tribe and gave it to white farmers. Most of the Cherokees lived in Georgia and Alabama. They were a civilized Indian nation. The Cherokees developed an alphabet and schools. They printed a newspaper in their own language. They lived in wooden houses, some of which were two stories high. They had large fields in which they planted corn. They also planted orchards with nice apple trees. Jackson sent soldiers to force the Cherokees to leave their land, to leave everything behind, and to walk 1600 kilometers to a new home in Oklahoma where there were no buildings. The road that the Cherokees walked is called The Trail of Tears, because the women and children cried the entire distance as they walked to Oklahoma. About one-fourth of the Cherokees starved or froze to death.
Before Jackson became president, he was a general in the army. Earlier, Jackson fought a long war against the Seminole Indian tribe. Jackson did not like this tribe because it helped slaves to run away and it gave protection to run away slaves that had come to live with them. Jackson was not able to defeat this tribe because the Seminoles hid in the swamps of north Florida. Many of the Seminoles still live in the swamps today.