Politics and Regional Interests in two minutes
- The Federalist Party faded after the Hartford Convention of 1814. James Monroe beat Rufus King, 183 electoral votes to 34, in 1816, and in 1820 he won every electoral vote but one.
- A Boston Federalist newspaper named the Era of Good Feelings in 1817. Republicans had borrowed Federalist ideas in 1816, chartering the Second Bank and passing a protective tariff.
- Henry Clay named the American System in 1824: a protective tariff, a national bank and federal roads and canals. Madison had vetoed the Bonus Bill for roads in 1817, citing constitutional limits.
- Each region judged the plan by local interest: Northern manufacturers wanted protection, Southern planters who sold cotton abroad resented higher prices, and Westerners wanted roads and cheap land.
- The Panic of 1819 brought foreclosures and unemployment after cotton prices fell and the Second Bank tightened credit. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) upheld the Bank, but many Westerners and Southerners blamed it.
- The Missouri Compromise (1820) admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and barred slavery north of 36°30′ in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase.
- On the exam: expect causation (why unity gave way to sectional division) and comparison of North, South and West, linked to the Louisiana Purchase and the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854.
Topic 4.3 key terms
- Democratic-Republican Party
Thomas Jefferson's party, built on limited federal power and a country of farmers. By 1817 it ran the national government, and it had quietly borrowed some Federalist ideas, including a national bank.
- Federalist Party
Alexander Hamilton's party: a strong national government, a national bank, friendly trade with Britain. It opposed the War of 1812, and after its Hartford Convention the country treated it as unpatriotic. By 1817 it was dying as a national force.
- Era of Good Feelings
The nickname for James Monroe's presidency (1817–1825), coined by a Boston newspaper. One party, the Democratic-Republicans, dominated national politics and the Federalists faded away. People still fought bitterly over tariffs, banks, roads and slavery.
- Secession
A state or group of states formally leaving the Union. New England Federalists talked about it in 1814. Southern states would do it in 1860 and 1861.
- Hartford Convention
A secret meeting of New England Federalist delegates (December 1814–January 1815). It proposed constitutional amendments to limit Southern influence and Congress's power to make war. News of peace made the party look disloyal, and it never recovered nationally.
- Virginia dynasty
The run of Virginia presidents: Jefferson, Madison and Monroe held the office from 1801 to 1825, and four of the first five presidents were Virginians. New England Federalists resented it, and Hartford's amendment barring presidents from the same state back to back was aimed at it.
- Economic nationalism
Federal policies meant to build a strong, self-sufficient national economy: a national bank, a protective tariff and a stronger navy, later joined by roads and canals. After the War of 1812, many Republicans adopted what Federalists had proposed.
- Sectionalism
Loyalty to the interests of one region over the nation's. After 1815 the Northeast (shipping and mills), the South (cotton grown by enslaved labor) and the West (cheap land, few roads) wanted different national policies.
- Protective tariff
A tax on imports set high enough to make foreign goods cost more than American ones, shielding young home industries. The Tariff of 1816 was the first written with that purpose. Regions took sides by what their businesses needed.
- Second Bank of the United States
A national bank chartered by Congress in 1816 for twenty years. It held federal money, made loans, and made state banks keep gold and silver behind their paper notes. Debtors in the South and West came to resent it.
- Internal improvements
Federally funded roads, canals and bridges. Nationalists said they would bind the country together. Strict constructionists said the Constitution never gave Congress the power to build them.
- Strict construction
Reading the Constitution as allowing only the powers it lists. Madison thought roads and canals would help the country, but held that Congress needed an amendment before it could pay for them.
- American System
Henry Clay's plan for national growth: a protective tariff for Northern factories, a national bank for steady credit, and federal roads and canals linking West to East. Each region's piece was meant to pay for the others.
- Panic of 1819
The first major financial panic since the Constitution. The Second Bank tightened credit and demanded specie, state banks failed, and bankruptcies, unemployment and jailing for debt jumped. The West was hit hardest.
- Specie
Gold and silver coin. Banks promised to swap their paper notes for specie on demand. In 1819 many state banks could not.
- McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Maryland taxed the Second Bank's Baltimore branch. Chief Justice Marshall ruled that Congress had the implied power to create a bank (the 'necessary and proper' clause) and that a state cannot tax a federal institution, because federal law is supreme.
- Land Act of 1820
Cut the price of federal land from $2 to $1.25 an acre, lowered the smallest tract to 80 acres, and ended buying on credit: full cash payment. It made land cheaper and stopped new debt, but it did nothing for the debts already owed.
- Free state / slave state
A free state banned slavery and a slave state allowed it. Each state sent two senators, so every new state could shift the Senate's balance, and Congress fought over each one.
- Tallmadge Amendment
A February 1819 proposal to bar new enslaved people from Missouri and free the children born there at age 25. The House passed it along sectional lines, and the Senate killed it.
- Doughface
A Northerner who voted with the South on slavery. Virginia's John Randolph coined the insult during the Missouri debates, and it stuck for forty years.
- Missouri Compromise
The 1820 deal that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30′ and allowed it south of the line.
- 36°30′ line
The southern border of Missouri, extended west. In 1820 Congress banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of it, Missouri excepted, and left the land south of it open. It held until 1854.
- Missouri Compromise (1820)
The deal that admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state and banned slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30′. Almost every member of Congress voted the way his region did.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Good Feelings
1817–1819
Key terms: Democratic-Republican Party, Federalist Party, Era of Good Feelings, Secession
Boston, July 1817. King Street is State Street now, hung with flags for a president. James Monroe is a Virginia Republican. Boston is a Federalist town. Everyone has turned out anyway.
Otis sat at the Hartford Convention, where some New Englanders talked of leaving the Union. Russell's paper attacked Jefferson and Madison for sixteen years. Today both cheer a Virginian.
July 12. Russell's Columbian Centinel names the moment: an "Era of Good Feelings." A Federalist paper, praising a Republican president, two and a half years after Hartford.
Washington, February 16, 1819. Congress is arguing about slavery in Missouri.
Thomas W. Cobb
You have kindled a fire which all the waters of the ocean cannot put out, which seas of blood can only extinguish.
James Tallmadge Jr.
If civil war, which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it come!
Nineteen months from the cheering on State Street to talk of seas of blood. How does a country with one party and one mood get there?
One Party
1815–1820
Key terms: Hartford Convention, Virginia dynasty, Economic nationalism, Sectionalism
To get one party, let the other oppose a war and meet in secret.
New England Federalists did both, at Hartford, in December 1814.
They wanted two-thirds votes for war, and no president twice in a row from one state.
Then came peace. The war ended in a draw. The country decided it had won.
In 1816 Monroe beat the Federalist Rufus King, 183 electoral votes to 34.
Monroe's inauguration moved outdoors, after the House and Senate fought over chairs.
James Monroe
Discord does not belong to our system.
He meant it.
Monroe was the last Revolutionary officer to be president, shot at Trenton at eighteen.
Then Republicans borrowed Federalist ideas: a national bank, a tariff, a bigger navy, all in 1816.
By 1820 the Federalists ran nobody. Monroe won every electoral vote but one.
Legend says William Plumer dissented so Washington would stay the only unanimous president. His own reason was duller.
Monroe's one party held three regions with three different economies. One of them depended on slavery.
The American System
1815–1824
Key terms: Protective tariff, Second Bank of the United States, Internal improvements, Strict construction, American System
The war taught Washington two lessons: no national bank to borrow from, hardly a road to march on.
Then peace came, and British cloth flooded American docks. Henry Brougham told the Commons a loss was worth it to "stifle in the cradle" America's war-born factories.
Two young War Hawks, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun, wanted Washington to fix all of it.
The Tariff of 1816 was the first meant to protect American factories. Calhoun voted yes. Webster, for New England's shipowners, voted no. By 1828 they had traded sides.
The Second Bank opened in Carpenters' Hall, where the First Continental Congress had met. Madison had called a national bank unconstitutional in 1791. In 1816, he signed one.
Calhoun's Bonus Bill would spend the Bank's charter bonus on roads.
John C. Calhoun
Let us, then, bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space.
On his last full day in office, Madison vetoed it.
James Madison
I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States.
He liked roads. He wanted an amendment first, and none ever came. Congress had already paid for one big road, over the Alleghenies to the Ohio. Elsewhere, states built their own.
In 1824 Clay gave the package a name.
Henry Clay
But there is a remedy, and that remedy consists in modifying our foreign policy, and in adopting a genuine American System.
"This favorite American policy is what America has never tried; and this odious foreign policy is what, as we are told, foreign states have never pursued."
Webster, for New England's shipowners, did not buy the name. The plan sounded national. Every region judged it by what it did at home.
Southern planters sold cotton abroad and bought goods back. A tariff taxed what they bought, to help Northern mills. Every bale was grown by enslaved people.
1819
1816–1821
Key terms: Panic of 1819, Specie, McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), Land Act of 1820
In 1815, a volcano named Tambora blew up in Indonesia, half a world away. The next June, it snowed in New England.
Europe went hungry and paid high prices for American crops. Settlers rushed west, buying federal land on credit with state banks' paper money.
Most of that land had just been taken from Native nations, by war and by treaty.
Then Europe's harvests recovered. By 1820, a pound of cotton sold for half its 1818 price.
The Second Bank called in its loans and demanded gold and silver from state banks. It had a reason: they'd printed far more paper than they could redeem.
Farms went under the sheriff's hammer. City workers lost their jobs. In Philadelphia that year, more than eighteen hundred people went to prison for debt.
In 1833, in Andrew Jackson's war on the Bank, the writer William Gouge gave his verdict.
The Bank was saved, and the people were ruined.
In March 1819, the Supreme Court upheld the Bank. Congress could charter one, and no state could tax it.
John Marshall
The power to tax involves the power to destroy.
The McCulloch in the case was the Bank's Baltimore cashier. He'd been lending its money to himself and his friends.
Ohio ignored the ruling. Its agents walked into the Bank's Chillicothe branch and took a hundred thousand dollars. Five years later, the Supreme Court ruled Ohio had to give it back.
In 1820, Congress ended credit and cut the price to $1.25 an acre. Across the West and the South, people blamed the Bank. They would remember.
The Line
1819–1821
Key terms: Free state / slave state, Tallmadge Amendment, Sectionalism, Doughface, Missouri Compromise
Early 1819: eleven free states, ten slave states. The North holds the House, 105 seats to 81. In the Senate, one new state could tip the balance.
Missouri asks to join as a slave state. About ten thousand people there are enslaved. Only Louisiana has come from the Purchase, so Missouri sets the rule.
February 13, 1819. New York's James Tallmadge amends Missouri's statehood bill. No more enslaved people may be brought in. Children born there go free at twenty-five.
Tallmadge helped write New York's own gradual emancipation law. In 1820, New York still held about ten thousand people in slavery. So did Missouri.
The House passes it, North against South. The Senate kills it, and Missouri waits. Southerners say Congress can't set terms for a new state. They call restriction a first step.
Alabama makes it eleven states apiece. Maine asks in, and the Senate ties its bill to Missouri's. Illinois's Jesse Thomas adds a line: north of thirty-six thirty, no slavery in the Purchase, except Missouri.
The vote happens in the new Hall of the House, which Samuel Morse would paint by lamplight. The painting toured the country and lost money.
Four members are about to speak. Walk the Hall and hear them first.
Ninety to eighty-seven: Missouri may keep slavery. Every no came from a free state. Almost every member voted with his region. A few Northerners crossed, and three votes decided it.
Monroe signs on March 6. Missouri keeps slavery, Maine enters free, and slavery is barred north of thirty-six thirty. South of that line, slavery may keep spreading.
Adams backs the deal, then writes down his doubts.
John Quincy Adams
If the Union must be dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which it ought to break. For the present, however, this contest is laid asleep.
Missouri's new constitution tells its legislature to bar free Black people from the state. Clay's 1821 fix protects citizens of other states. It never says whether free Black people count.
Missouri joins on August 10, 1821. Twelve free states, twelve slave, and a line across the Purchase. Congress settled Missouri. It did not settle slavery.
A Fire Bell in the Night
1820–1824
Key terms: 36°30′ line, Sectionalism, Missouri Compromise (1820)
Monticello, April 22, 1820. Thomas Jefferson is seventy-seven and has stopped following politics. A Massachusetts congressman mails him a letter about Missouri. Jefferson writes back.
Thomas Jefferson
But this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.
Thomas Jefferson
I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.
Thomas Jefferson
It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.
Thomas Jefferson
A geographical line, coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men, will never be obliterated;
Thomas Jefferson
and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper.
Thomas Jefferson
But as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.
Thomas Jefferson
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.
Jefferson wrote this to a Northern congressman. He enslaved more than six hundred people in his life. He freed five in his will. In January 1827, his estate sold 130 people to pay his debts.
The line held for thirty-four years.
The one party didn't hold. In 1824, four Republicans ran for president, each backed by his own region.
One party hid three regions. Every national plan helped some regions more than others. Hard times turned them against Washington. And slavery was the one question nobody could split down the middle.
The good feelings lasted about two years. The question Missouri raised took a war to answer.