Agrarian Republic Dbq

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Agrarian republicanism is what Thomas Jefferson strived for America to take as a form of the nation. Agrarian republicanism consisted of a nation of small family farms clustered tighter in rural communities. As he was in the White House, he bred some new traits of the developing nation. Although Jefferson started to establish his clearly defined idea of what form the American nation should take of agrarian republicanism as president, there were many issues and forces that threatened its survival by 1826 including westward expansion, slavery, and the economics of the time. As seen in Document A, Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian republic nation consisted of farmers who work on their own land producing mostly subsistence crops, little or no slave laborers with a relaxed, unscheduled work pace, and a ranch surrounded by crops secluded from most others in a small community. As the Louisiana Purchase was bought, expansion westward became popular. This expansion threatened the idea of an agrarian republic by fostering constant mobility and dissatisfaction rather than the stable, settled communities of yeoman farmers that Jefferson envisaged. Jefferson’s expansionism helped the spread of plantations based on slave labor in the South while it also caused environmental damage, especially soil exhaustion. Lastly, it created a relentless toward the Native Americans, who were pushed out of the way for white settlement or were devastated by the diseases that the Europeans brought with them through trade and contact. Document A also showed how Jefferson imagined farms mainly farming for subsistence with maybe a little for sale. With the Missouri Compromise in Document C, there were many states that prohibited slavery. With the use of slave laborers on the ample farms of the South, the farms produced a handful of crops mostly used for profit which wasn’t what Jefferson wanted,
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