The Second War for Independence and the Upsurge of …...A third British blow of 1814, aim ed at New...

12

The Second War forIndependence and theUpsurge of Nationalism

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1812–1824

The American continents . . . are henceforth not to be considered assubjects for future colonization by any European powers.

PRESIDENT JAMES MONROE, DECEMBER 2, 1823

The War of 1812, largely because of widespreaddisun ity, ranks as one of Am erica’s worst-fought

wars. There was no burn ing national anger, as therehad been in 1807 following the Chesapeake outrage.The suprem e lesson of the conflict was the folly ofleading a divided and apathetic people in to war.And yet, despite the un im pressive m ilitary outcom eand even less decisive negotiated peace, Am ericanscam e out of the war with a renewed sense of nation -hood. For the next dozen years, an awakened sp iritof nationalism would inspire activities ranging fromprotecting m anufacturing to building roads todefending the authority of the federal governm entover the states.

On to Canada over Land and Lakes

On the eve of the War of 1812, the regular arm y wasill-trained, ill-discip lined, and widely scattered. Ithad to be supplem en ted by the even m ore poorlytrained m ilitia, who were som etim es distinguishedby their speed of foot in leaving the battlefield.Som e of the ranking generals were sem isen ile heir-loom s from the Revolutionary War, rusting on theirlaurels and lacking in vigor and vision .

The offensive strategy against Canada was espe-cially poorly conceived. Had the Am ericans cap-tured Montreal, the cen ter of population and

233

transportation , everyth ing to the west m ight havedied, just as the leaves of a tree wither when thetrunk is girdled. But in stead of laying ax to the trunk,the Am ericans frittered away their strength in thethree-pronged invasion of 1812. The trio of invadingforces that set out from Detroit, Niagara, and LakeCham plain were all beaten back shortly after theyhad crossed the Canadian border.

By con trast, the British and Canadians dis-p layed energy from the outset. Early in the war, theycaptured the Am erican fort of Michilim ackinac,which com m anded the upper Great Lakes and theIndian -inhabited area to the south and west. Theirbrillian t defensive operations were led by theinspired British general Isaac Brock and assisted (inthe Am erican cam p) by “General Mud’’ and “Gen-eral Confusion .’’

When several Am erican land invasions ofCanada were again hurled back in 1813, Am ericanslooked for success on water. Man for m an and shipfor sh ip, the Am erican navy did m uch better thanthe arm y. In com parison to British sh ips, Am ericancraft on the whole were m ore skillfu lly handled, hadbetter gunners, and were m anned by non-press-gang crews who were burn ing to avenge num erousindign ities. Sim ilarly, the Am erican frigates, notablythe Constitu tion (“Old Ironsides”), had th icker sides,heavier firepower, and larger crews, of which onesailor in six was a free black.

Control of the Great Lakes was vital, and an ener-getic Am erican naval officer, Oliver Hazard Perry,

m anaged to build a fleet of green-tim bered ships onthe shores of Lake Erie, m anned by even greener sea-m en. When he captured a British fleet in a furiousengagem ent on the lake, he reported to his superior,“We have m et the enem y and they are ours.’’ Perry’svictory and his slogan infused new life in to thedrooping Am erican cause. Forced to withdraw fromDetroit and Fort Malden, the retreating redcoats wereovertaken by General Harrison’s arm y and beaten atthe Battle of the Tham es in October 1813.

Despite these successes, the Am ericans by late1814, far from invading Canada, were grim ly defend-ing their own soil against the invading British . InEurope the diversionary power of Napoleon wasdestroyed in m id-1814, and the dangerous despotwas exiled to the Mediterranean isle of Elba. TheUnited States, which had so brashly provoked warbehind the protective skirts of Napoleon , was nowleft to face the m usic alone. Thousands of victoriousveteran redcoats began to pour in to Canada fromthe Continen t.

Assem bling som e ten thousand crack troops,the British prepared in 1814 for a crushing blow in toNew York along the fam iliar lake-river route. In theabsence of roads, the invader was forced to bringsupplies over the Lake Cham plain waterway. Aweaker Am erican fleet, com m anded by the th irty-year-old Thom as Macdonough, challenged theBritish . The ensuing battle was desperately foughtnear Plattsburgh on Septem ber 11, 1814, on float-ing slaughterhouses. The Am erican flagship at one

234 CHAPTER 12 The Second War for Independence and the Upsurge of Nationalism , 1812–1824

St.

Lawrence

R.

Lake Ontario

LakeChamplain

Lake Erie

LakeHuron

Montreal

AlbanyFort Niagara

Fort Michilimackinac (Captured by British, 1812)

Detroit

B R I T I S H C A N A D A 3

21

U.S. invasions

Battle of the Thames

St.Lawrence

R.

Lake OntarioLake

Champlain

Lake Erie

LakeH

uron

Montreal

AlbanyFort Niagara

York(Toronto)

DetroitFort Maiden

B R I T I S H C A N A D A

United Statesforce repulsed

United Statesforce repulsed

Perry's routeHarrison's routeU.S. invasions

The Three U.S. Invasions of 1812 Campaigns of 1813

poin t was in grave trouble. But Macdonough, unex-pectedly turn ing h is sh ip about with cables, con-fron ted the enem y with a fresh broadside andsnatched victory from the fangs of defeat.

The results of this heroic naval battle werem om entous. The invading British arm y was forced toretreat. Macdonough thus saved at least upper NewYork from conquest, New England from further dis-affection , and the Union from possible dissolution .He also profoundly affected the concurren t negotia-tions of the Anglo-Am erican peace treaty in Europe.

Washington Burned and New Orleans Defended

A second form idable British force, num bering aboutfour thousand, landed in the Chesapeake Bay areain August 1814. Advancing rapidly on Washington , iteasily dispersed som e six thousand pan icky m ilitiaat Bladensburg (“the Bladensburg races’’). Theinvaders then en tered the capital and set fire tom ost of the public buildings, including the Capitoland the White House. But while Washington burned,

the Am ericans at Baltim ore held firm . The Britishfleet ham m ered Fort McHenry with their cannonbut could not capture the city. Francis Scott Key, adetained Am erican anxiously watching the bom -bardm ent from a British sh ip, was inspired by thedoughty defenders to write the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Set to the tune of a saucy Englishtavern refrain , the song quickly attained popularity.

Battles on Lakes and Land 235

Andrew Jackson (1767–1845) appealed to thegovernor of Lou isiana for help recru iting freeblacks to defend New Orleans in 1814:“The free men of colour in [your] city areinured to the Southern climate and wouldmake excellent Soldiers. . . . They must be foror against us—dist rust them, and you makethem your enemies, place confidence inthem, and you engage them by every dearand honorable t ie to the interest of thecount ry, who extends to them equal rightsand [privileges] with white men.”

A third British blow of 1814, aim ed at NewOrleans, m enaced the entire Mississippi Valley. Gauntand hawk-faced Andrew Jackson, fresh from crushingthe southwest Indians at the Battle of HorseshoeBend, was placed in com m and (see m ap, p. 252). Hishodgepodge force consisted of seven thousandsailors, regulars, pirates, and Frenchm en, as well asm ilitiam en from Louisiana, Kentucky, and Ten-nessee. Am ong the defenders were two Louisianaregim ents of free black volunteers, num bering aboutfour hundred m en. The Am ericans threw up theirentrenchm ent, and in the words of a popular song,

Behind it stood our little force—None wished it to be greater;For ev’ry m an was half a horse,And half an alligator.

The overconfiden t British , num bering som eeight thousand battle-seasoned veterans, blunderedbadly. They m ade the m istake of launching a fron talassault, on January 8, 1815, on the en trenchedAm erican riflem en and cannoneers. The attackerssuffered the m ost devastating defeat of the en tirewar, losing over two thousand, killed and wounded,


in half an hour, as com pared with som e seven ty forthe Am ericans. It was an aston ishing victory forJackson and h is m en .

News of the victory struck the coun try “like aclap of thunder,” according to one con tem porary.Andrew Jackson becam e a national hero as poetsand politicians lined up to sing the praises of thedefenders of New Orleans. It hardly m attered whenword arrived that a peace treaty had been signed atGhen t, Belgium , ending the war two weeks beforethe battle. The United States had fought for honor as m uch as m aterial gain . The Battle of New Orleans restored that honor, at least in Am ericaneyes, and un leashed a wave of nationalism and self-confidence.

Its wrath aroused, the Royal Navy had finallyretaliated by throwing a ru inous naval blockadealong Am erica’s coast and by landing raiding partiesalm ost at will. Am erican econom ic life, includingfish ing, was crippled. Custom s revenues werechoked off, and near the end of the war, the bank-rupt Treasury was unable to m eet its m aturingobligations.

The Treaty of Ghent

Tsar Alexander I of Russia, feeling hard-pressed byNapoleon’s arm y and not wan ting h is British ally tofritter away its strength in Am erica, proposed m edi-ation between the clashing Anglo-Saxon cousins in

1812. The tsar’s feeler even tually set in m otion them achinery that brought five Am erican peacem akersto the quain t Belgian city of Ghen t in 1814. The bick-ering group was headed by early-rising, puritan icalJohn Quincy Adam s, son of John Adam s, whodeplored the late-hour card p laying of h is h igh-living colleague Henry Clay.

Confiden t after their m ilitary successes, theBritish envoys m ade sweeping dem ands for a neutralized Indian buffer state in the Great Lakesregion , con trol of the Great Lakes, and a substan tialpart of conquered Maine. The Am ericans flatlyrejected these term s, and the talks appeared stale-m ated. But news of British reverses in upper NewYork and at Baltim ore, and increasing war-weari-ness in Britain , m ade London m ore willing to com -prom ise. Preoccupied with redrafting Napoleon’sm ap of Europe at the Congress of Vienna and eyeingstill-dangerous France, the British lion resigneditself to licking its wounds.

The Treaty of Ghen t, signed on Christm as Eve in1814, was essen tially an arm istice. Both sides sim ply

The Treaty of Ghen t 237

Sm arting from wounded pride on the sea, theLondon Tim es (Decem ber 30, 1814) urgedchastisem en t for Am ericans:“The people—naturally vain, boast ful, andinsolent—have been filled with an absolutecontempt for our marit ime power, and afurious eagerness to beat down our marit imepretensions. Those passions, which havebeen inflamed by success, could only havebeen cooled by what in vulgar and emphat iclanguage has been termed ‘a soundflogging.’”

President ial Elect ion of 1812 (with electoral vote by state)The Federalists showed impressive strength in the North, andtheir presidential candidate, DeWitt Clinton, the future “Fatherof the Erie Canal,” almost won. If the 25 electoral votes ofPennsylvania had gone to the New Yorker, he would havewon, 114 to 103.

MISSOURITERRITORY

SPANISH FLORIDA

MISSISSIPPITERRITORY GEORGIA

8

S.C.11

N.C.15TENN. 8

KY.12

VIRGINIA25

MD. 11DEL. 4

N.J. 8PA.25

N.Y.29

CONN. 9R.I. 4

MASS.22

VT.8 N.H.

8

OHIO7IND.ILLINOIS

TERR.

LA.3

MICH.TERR.

Madison: Democratic–RepublicanClinton:Federalist

Divided

agreed to stop fighting and to restore conquered ter-ritory. No m en tion was m ade of those grievances forwhich Am erica had ostensibly fought: the Indianm enace, search and seizure, Orders in Council,im pressm en t, and confiscations. These discreetom issions have often been cited as further evidenceof the in sincerity of the war hawks. Rather, they areproof that the Am ericans had not m anaged todefeat the British . With neither side able to im poseits will, the treaty negotiations—like the war itself—ended as a virtual draw. Relieved Am ericans boasted“Not One Inch of Territory Ceded or Lost”—a phrasethat con trasted strangely with the “On to Canada”rallying cry of the war’s outset.

Federalist Grievancesand the Hartford Convention

Defian t New England rem ained a problem . It pros-pered during the conflict, owing largely to illicittrade with the enem y in Canada and to the absenceof a British blockade un til 1814. But the em bitteredopposition of the Federalists to the war con tinuedunabated.

As the war dragged on , New England extrem istsbecam e m ore vocal. A sm all m inority of them pro-posed secession from the Union , or at least a sep-arate peace with Britain . Ugly rum ors were afloat


about “Blue Light’’ Federalists—treacherous NewEnglanders who supposedly flashed lan terns on theshore so that blockading British cruisers would bealerted to the attem pted escape of Am erican ships.

The m ost spectacular m an ifestation of Federal-ist discon ten t was the ill-om ened Hartford Conven-tion . Late in 1814, when the capture of New Orleansseem ed im m inen t, Massachusetts issued a call for aconven tion at Hartford, Connecticut. The states ofMassachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island dis-patched fu ll delegations; neighboring New Ham p-shire and Verm ont sen t partial represen tation . Thisgroup of prom inen t m en , twen ty-six in all, m et incom plete secrecy for about three weeks—Decem ber15, 1814, to January 5, 1815—to discuss their griev-ances and to seek redress for their wrongs.

In tru th , the Hartford Conven tion was actuallyless radical than the alarm ists supposed. Though a m inority of delegates gave ven t to wild talk of se-cession , the conven tion’s final report was quitem oderate. It dem anded, financial assistance fromWashington to com pensate for lost trade and pro-posed constitu tional am endm ents requiring a two-th irds vote in Congress before an em bargo could beim posed, new states adm itted, or war declared.Most of the dem ands reflected Federalist fears that aonce-proud New England was falling subservien t toan agrarian South and West. Delegates sought toabolish the three-fifths clause in the Constitu tion(which allowed the South to coun t a portion of itsslaves in calculating proportional represen tation ),to lim it presiden ts to a single term , and to prohibitthe election of two successive presiden ts from thesam e state. This last clause was aim ed at the m uch-resen ted “Virgin ia Dynasty”—by 1814 a Virgin ianhad been presiden t for all but four years in theRepublic’s quarter-cen tury of life.

Three special envoys from Massachusetts car-ried these dem ands to the burned-out capital ofWashington . The trio arrived just in tim e to be over-whelm ed by the glorious news from New Orleans,followed by that from Ghen t. As the rest of thenation congratu lated itself on a glorious victory,New England’s wartim e com plain ts seem ed petty atbest and treasonous at worst. Pursued by the sneersand jeers of the press, the envoys sank away in dis-grace and in to obscurity.

The Hartford resolutions, as it turned out, werethe death dirge of the Federalist party. In 1816 theFederalists nom inated their last presiden tial candi-

date. He was handily trounced by Jam es Monroe, yetanother Virgin ian .

Federalist doctrines of disun ity, which long sur-vived the party, blazed a fateful trail. Until 1815 therewas far m ore talk of nullification and secession inNew England than in any other section , includingthe South. The outright flouting of the Jefferson ianem bargo and the later crippling of the war effortwere the two m ost dam aging acts of nullification inAm erica prior to the even ts leading to the Civil War.

The Second Warfor American Independence

The War of 1812 was a sm all war, involving about6,000 Am ericans killed or wounded. It was but afootnote to the m ighty European conflagration . In1812, when Napoleon invaded Russia with about500,000 m en , Madison tried to invade Canada withabout 5,000 m en . But if the Am erican conflict wasglobally un im portan t, it had huge consequences forthe United States.

The Republic had shown that it would resist,sword in hand, what it regarded as grievous wrongs.Other nations developed a new respect for Am er-ica’s fighting prowess. Naval officers like Perry andMacdonough were the m ost effective type of nego-tiators; the hot breath of their broadsides spoke the m ost eloquen t dip lom atic language. Am erica’sem issaries abroad were henceforth treated with less

The War of 1812 239

The War of 1812 won a new respect forAm erica am ong m any Britons. Michael Scott,a young lieu tenan t in the British navy, wrote,“I don’t like Americans; I never did, and nevershall like them. . . . I have no wish to eat withthem, drink with them, deal with, or consortwith them in any way; but let me tell thewhole t ruth, nor fight with them, were it notfor the laurels to be acquired, by overcomingan enemy so brave, determined, and alert ,and in every way so worthy of one’s steel, as they have always proved.”

scorn . In a dip lom atic sense, if not in a m ilitarysense, the conflict could be called the Second Warfor Am erican Independence.

A new nation , m oreover, was welded in the fieryfurnace of arm ed conflict. Sectionalism , now iden ti-fied with discredited New England Federalists, wasdealt a black eye. The pain ful even ts of the war glar-ingly revealed, as perhaps nothing else could havedone, the folly of sectional disun ity. In a sense them ost conspicuous casualty of the war was the Federalist party.

War heroes em erged, especially the two Indian -fighters Andrew Jackson and William Henry Harri-son . Both of them were to becom e presiden t. Left inthe lurch by their British friends at Ghen t, the Indi-ans were forced to m ake such term s as they could.They reluctan tly consen ted, in a series of treaties, torelinquish vast areas of forested land north of theOhio River.

Manufacturing prospered behind the fierywooden wall of the British blockade. In an eco-nom ic sense, as well as in a dip lom atic sense, theWar of 1812 m ay be regarded as the Second War forAm erican Independence. The industries that werethus stim ulated by the fighting rendered Am ericaless dependen t on Europe’s workshops.

Canadian patriotism and nationalism alsoreceived a powerful stim ulus from the clash . ManyCanadians felt betrayed by the Treaty of Ghen t. Theywere especially aggrieved by the failure to secure anIndian buffer state or even m astery of the GreatLakes. Canadians fu lly expected the frustrated Yan-kees to return , and for a tim e the Am ericans andBritish engaged in a floating arm s race on the GreatLakes. But in 1817 the Rush-Bagot agreem en tbetween Britain and the United States severely lim -ited naval arm am ent on the lakes. Better relationsbrought the last border fortifications down in the1870s, with the happy result that the Un ited Statesand Canada cam e to share the world’s longestunfortified boundary—5,527 m iles long.

After Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in1815, Europe slum ped in to a peace of exhaustion .Deposed m onarchs returned to battered thrones, asthe Old World took the ru tted road back to conser-vatism , illiberalism , and reaction . But the Am ericanpeople were largely unaffected by these Europeandevelopm ents. Turn ing their backs on the OldWorld, they faced resolutely toward the un tam edWest—and toward the task of building their dem ocracy.

Nascent Nationalism

The m ost im pressive by-product of the War of 1812was a heightened nationalism —the sp irit of nation -consciousness or national oneness. Am erica m aynot have fought the war as one nation , but item erged as one nation .

The changed m ood even m an ifested itself in thebirth of a distinctively national literature. Washing-ton Irving and Jam es Fen im ore Cooper attainedin ternational recogn ition in the 1820s, sign ifican tlyas the nation’s first writers of im portance to useAm erican scenes and them es. School textbooks,often British in an earlier era, were now being writ-ten by Am ericans for Am ericans. In the world ofm agazines, the h ighly in tellectual North Am ericanReview began publication in 1815—the year of thetrium ph at New Orleans. Even Am erican pain tersincreasingly celebrated their native landscapes ontheir canvases.

A fresh nationalistic sp irit could be recogn izedin m any other areas as well. The rising tide ofnation -consciousness even touched finance. Arevived Bank of the Un ited States was voted by Con-gress in 1816. A m ore handsom e national capitalbegan to rise from the ashes of Washington . Thearm y was expanded to ten thousand m en . The navyfurther covered itself with glory in 1815 when itadm in istered a thorough beating to the p iraticalp lunderers of North Africa. Stephen Decatur, navalhero of the War of 1812 and of the Barbary Coastexpeditions, pungen tly captured the coun try’snationalist m ood in a fam ous toast m ade on h isreturn from the Mediterranean cam paigns: “Ourcoun try! In her in tercourse with foreign nationsm ay she always be in the right; but our coun try,right or wrong!’’

“The American System’’

Nationalism likewise m an ifested itself in m anufac-turing. Patriotic Am ericans took pride in the facto-ries that had recen tly m ushroom ed forth , largely asa result of the self-im posed em bargoes and the war.

When hostilities ended in 1815, British com -petitors undertook to recover lost ground. Theybegan to dum p the con ten ts of their bulging ware-houses on the United States, often cutting their


prices below cost in an effort to strangle the Am eri-can war-baby factories in the cradle. The in fan tindustries bawled lustily for protection . To m anyred-blooded Am ericans, it seem ed as though theBritish , having failed to crush Yankee fighters on thebattlefield, were now seeking to crush Yankee facto-ries in the m arketp lace.

A nationalist Congress, out-Federalizing the oldFederalists, responded by passing the path-breakingTariff of 1816—the first tariff in Am erican h istoryinstitu ted prim arily for protection , not revenue. Itsrates—roughly 20 to 25 percen t on the value ofdutiable im ports—were not h igh enough to providecom pletely adequate safeguards, but the law was abold beginn ing. A strongly protective trend wasstarted that stim ulated the appetites of the pro-tected for m ore protection .

Nationalism was further h ighlighted by agrandiose p lan of Henry Clay for developing a prof-itable hom e m arket. Still radiating the nationalismof war-hawk days, he threw him self behind an elab-orate schem e known by 1824 as the Am erican Sys-

tem . This system had three m ain parts. It began witha strong banking system , which would provide easyand abundan t credit. Clay also advocated a protec-tive tariff, behind which eastern m anufacturingwould flourish . Revenues gushing from the tariffwould provide funds for the th ird com ponen t of theAm erican system —a network of roads and canals,especially in the burgeon ing Ohio Valley. Throughthese new arteries of transportation would flowfoodstuffs and raw m aterials from the South andWest to the North and East. In exchange, a stream ofm anufactured goods would flow in the return direc-tion , kn itting the coun try together econom icallyand politically.

Persisten t and eloquen t dem ands by Henry Clayand others for better transportation struck aresponsive chord with the public. The recen tattem pts to invade Canada had all failed partlybecause of oath-provoking roads—or no roads atall. People who have dug wagons out of hub-deepm ud do not quickly forget their blisters and back-aches. An outcry for better transportation , rising

Econom ic Nationalism 241

m ost noisily in the road-poor West, was one of them ost striking aspects of the nationalism inspired bythe War of 1812.

But attem pts to secure federal funding for roadsand canals stum bled on Republican constitu tionalscruples. Congress voted in 1817 to distribute $1.5m illion to the states for in ternal im provem ents. ButPresiden t Madison stern ly vetoed th is handoutm easure as unconstitu tional. The individual stateswere thus forced to ven ture ahead with construc-tion program s of their own , including the ErieCanal, trium phan tly com pleted by New York in1825. Jefferson ian Republicans, who had gulpeddown Ham ilton ian loose construction ism on other

im portan t problem s, choked on the idea of directfederal support of in trastate in ternal im provem ents.New England, in particular, strongly opposed feder-ally constructed roads and canals, because suchoutlets would further drain away population andcreate com peting states beyond the m oun tains.

The So-Called Era of Good Feelings

Jam es Monroe—six feet tall, som ewhat stooped,courtly, and m ild-m annered—was nom inated forthe presidency in 1816 by the Republicans. Theythus undertook to con tinue the so-called Virgin iadynasty of Washington , Jefferson , and Madison. The


fading Federalists ran a candidate for the last tim ein their checkered h istory, and he was crushed by183 electoral votes to 34. The vanquished Federalistparty was gasping its dying breaths, leaving the fieldto the trium phan t Republicans and one-party ru le.

In Jam es Monroe, the m an and the tim es auspi-ciously m et. As the last presiden t to wear an old-stylecocked hat, he straddled two generations: thebygone age of the Founding Fathers and the em er-gen t age of nationalism . Never brillian t, and perhapsnot great, the serene Virgin ian with gray-blue eyeswas in in tellect and personal force the least distin -guished of the first eight presiden ts. But the tim escalled for sober adm in istration , not dashing heroics.And Monroe was an experienced, levelheaded exec-utive, with an ear-to-the-ground talen t for in terpret-ing popular rum blings.

Em erging nationalism was further cem en ted bya goodwill tour Monroe undertook early in 1817,ostensibly to in spect m ilitary defenses. He pushednorthward deep in to New England and then west-ward to Detroit, viewing en route Niagara Falls. Evenin Federalist New England, “the enem y’s coun try,’’he received a heartwarm ing welcom e; a Bostonnewspaper was so far carried away as to announcethat an “Era of Good Feelings’’ had been ushered in .This happy phrase has been com m only used sincethen to describe the adm in istrations of Monroe.

The Era of Good Feelings, un fortunately, wassom ething of a m isnom er. Considerable tranquilityand prosperity did in fact sm ile upon the early yearsof Monroe, but the period was a troubled one. Theacute issues of the tariff, the bank, in ternal im prove-m en ts, and the sale of public lands were being hotly

con tested. Sectionalism was crystallizing, and theconflict over slavery was beginn ing to raise itsh ideous head.

The Panic of 1819and the Curse of Hard Times

Much of the goodness wen t out of the good feelings in 1819, when a paralyzing econom ic pan ic descended. It brought deflation , depression ,bankruptcies, bank failures, unem ploym ent, soupkitchens, and overcrowded pesthouses known asdebtors’ prisons.

This was the first national financial pan ic sincePresiden t Washington took office. Many factors con-tributed to the catastrophe of 1819, but loom inglarge was overspeculation in fron tier lands. TheBank of the Un ited States, through its westernbranches, had becom e deeply involved in th is pop-ular type of outdoor gam bling.

Financial paralysis from the pan ic, which lastedin som e degree for several years, gave a rude setbackto the nationalistic ardor. The West was especiallyhard h it. When the p inch cam e, the Bank of theUnited States forced the speculative (“wildcat’’)western banks to the wall and foreclosed m ortgageson coun tless farm s. All th is was techn ically legal butpolitically unwise. In the eyes of the western debtor,the nationalist Bank of the Un ited States soonbecam e a kind of financial devil.

The pan ic of 1819 also created backwashes inthe political and social world. The poorer classes—the one-suspender m en and their fam ilies—wereseverely strapped, and in their troubles was sownthe seed of Jackson ian dem ocracy. Hard tim es alsodirected atten tion to the inhum anity of im prison ingdebtors. In extrem e cases, often overplayed, m oth-ers were torn from their in fan ts for owing a few dol-lars. Moun ting agitation against im prisonm ent fordebt bore fru it in rem edial legislation in an increas-ing num ber of states.

Growing Pains of the West

The onward m arch of the West con tinued; n ine fron-tier states had joined the original th irteen between1791 and 1819. With an eye to preserving the North-

Econom ic Strains 243

Boston’s Colum bian Cen tinel was not theon ly newspaper to regard Presiden t Monroe’searly m on ths as the Era of Good Feelings.Washington’s National In telligencer observedin Ju ly 1817,“Never before, perhaps, since the inst itut ionof civil government , did the same harmony,the same absence of party spirit , the samenat ional feeling, pervade a community. Theresult is too consoling to dispute too nicelyabout the cause.”

South sectional balance, m ost of these com m on-wealths had been adm itted alternately, free or slave.(See Adm ission of States in the Appendix.)

Why th is explosive expansion? In part it wassim ply a con tinuation of the generations-old west-ward m ovem ent, which had been going on sinceearly colon ial days. In addition , the siren song ofcheap land—“the Ohio fever’’—had a special appealto European im m igran ts. Eager newcom ers fromabroad were beginn ing to stream down the gang-planks in im pressive num bers, especially after thewar of boycotts and bullets. Land exhaustion in theolder tobacco states, where the soil was “m ined’’rather than cultivated, likewise drove people west-ward. Glib speculators accepted sm all down pay-m en ts, m aking it easier to buy new holdings.

The western boom was stim ulated by additionaldevelopm ents. Acute econom ic distress during theem bargo years turned m any p inched faces towardthe setting sun . The crushing of the Indians in theNorthwest and South by Generals Harrison andJackson pacified the fron tier and opened up vastvirgin tracts of land. The building of h ighwaysim proved the land routes to the Ohio Valley. Note-worthy was the Cum berland Road, begun in 1811,which ran u ltim ately from western Maryland to Illi-nois. The use of the first steam boat on western

waters, also in 1811, heralded a new era of upstreamnavigation .

But the West, despite the in flow of settlers, wasstill weak in population and in fluence. Not poten tenough politically to m ake its voice heard, it wasforced to ally itself with other sections. Thusstrengthened, it dem anded cheap acreage and par-tially achieved its goal in the Land Act of 1820,which authorized a buyer to purchase 80 virginacres at a m in im um of $1.25 an acre in cash . TheWest also dem anded cheap transportation andslowly got it, despite the constitu tional qualm s ofthe presiden ts and the hostility of easterners.Finally, the West dem anded cheap m oney, issued byits own “wildcat’’ banks, and fought the powerfulBank of the Un ited States to attain its goal (see“Makers of Am erica: Settlers of the Old Northwest,”pp. 248–249).

Slavery and the Sectional Balance

Sectional tensions, involving rivalry between theslave South and the free North over con trol of thevirgin West, were stunn ingly revealed in 1819. Inthat year the territory of Missouri knocked on the


doors of Congress for adm ission as a slave state.This fertile and well-watered area con tained suffi-cien t population to warran t statehood. But theHouse of Represen tatives stym ied the p lans of theMissourians by passing the incendiary Tallm adgeam endm ent. It stipulated that no m ore slavesshould be brought in to Missouri and also providedfor the gradual em ancipation of children born toslave paren ts already there. A roar of anger burstfrom slave-holding southerners. They were joinedby m any depression -cursed p ioneers who favoredunham pered expansion of the West and by m anynortherners, especially diehard Federalists, whowere eager to use the issue to break the back of the“Virgin ia dynasty.’’

Southerners saw in the Tallm adge am endm ent,which they even tually m anaged to defeat in theSenate, an om inous threat to sectional balance.When the Constitu tion was adopted in 1788, theNorth and South were runn ing neck and neck inwealth and population . But with every passingdecade, the North was becom ing wealth ier and alsom ore th ickly settled—an advan tage reflected in anincreasing northern m ajority in the House of Repre-sen tatives. Yet in the Senate, each state had twovotes, regardless of size. With eleven states free andeleven slave, the southerners had m ain tainedequality. They were therefore in a good position tothwart any northern effort to in terfere with the

expansion of slavery, and they did not wan t to loseth is veto.

The fu ture of the slave system caused southern -ers profound concern . Missouri was the first stateen tirely west of the Mississippi River to be carvedout of the Louisiana Purchase, and the Missouriem ancipation am endm ent m ight set a dam agingpreceden t for all the rest of the area. Even m ore dis-quieting was another possibility. If Congress couldabolish the “peculiar in stitu tion’’ in Missouri, m ightit not attem pt to do likewise in the older states of theSouth? The wounds of the Constitu tional Conven-tion of 1787 were once m ore ripped open .

Burn ing m oral questions also protruded, eventhough the m ain issue was political and econom icbalance. A sm all but growing group of an tislaveryagitators in the North seized the occasion to raise anoutcry against the evils of slavery. They were deter-m ined that the p lague of hum an bondage shouldnot spread further in to the virgin territories.

The Uneasy Missouri Compromise

Deadlock in Washington was at length broken in1820 by the tim e-honored Am erican solution ofcom prom ise—actually a bundle of three com pro-m ises. Courtly Henry Clay of Ken tucky, gifted con-ciliator, p layed a leading role. Congress, despiteabolition ist p leas, agreed to adm it Missouri as aslave state. But at the sam e tim e, free-soil Maine,which un til then had been a part of Massachusetts,was adm itted as a separate state. The balancebetween North and South was thus kept at twelvestates each and rem ained there for fifteen years.Although Missouri was perm itted to retain slaves,all fu ture bondage was prohibited in the rem ainderof the Louisiana Purchase north of the line of 36°30'—the southern boundary of Missouri.

This horse-trading adjustm en t was politicallyevenhanded, though denounced by extrem ists oneach side as a “dirty bargain .’’ Both North and Southyielded som ething; both gained som ething. TheSouth won the prize of Missouri as an unrestrictedslave state. The North won the concession that Con-gress could forbid slavery in the rem ain ing territo-ries. More gratifying to m any northerners was thefact that the im m ense area north of 36° 30' , exceptMissouri, was forever closed to the blight of slavery.

The Missouri Com prom ise 245

Yet the restriction on fu ture slavery in the territorieswas not unduly offensive to the slaveowners, partlybecause the northern prairie land did not seemsuited to slave labor. Even so, a m ajority of southern congressm en still voted against the com prom ise.

Neither North nor South was acutely dis-p leased, although neither was com pletely happy.The Missouri Com prom ise lasted th irty-fouryears—a vital form ative period in the life of theyoung Republic—and during that tim e it preservedthe shaky com pact of the states. Yet the em bittereddispute over slavery heralded the fu ture breakup ofthe Union . Ever after, the m orality of the South’s“peculiar in stitu tion’’ was an issue that could not beswept under the rug. The Missouri Com prom iseon ly ducked the question—it did not resolve it.Sooner or later, Thom as Jefferson predicted, it will“burst on us as a tornado.’’

The Missouri Com prom ise and the concurren tpan ic of 1819 should have dim m ed the political starof Presiden t Monroe. Certain ly both unhappyeven ts had a dam pen ing effect on the Era of GoodFeelings. But sm ooth-spoken Jam es Monroe was sopopular, and the Federalist opposition so weak, thatin the presiden tial election of 1820, he received

every electoral vote except one. Unan im ity was anhonor reserved for George Washington . Monroe, as


The Missouri Compromise and Slavery,1820–1821 Note the 36° 30’ line. In the1780s Thomas Jefferson had written ofslavery in America, “Indeed I tremble formy country when I reflect that God is just;that his justice cannot sleep forever; that . . . the Almighty has no attribute which cantake side with us in such a contest.” Now,at the time of the Missouri Compromise,Jefferson feared that his worst forebodingswere coming to pass. “I considered it atonce,” he said of the Missouri question, “as the knell of the Union.”

OREGON COUNTRY

SPANISH TERRITORY

UNORGANIZED TERRITORY

ALA.

CONN.

DEL.

GA.

ILL.

36°30'

MICH. TERR.

IND.

KY.

LA.

ME.

MD.

MASS.

MO.

TENN.

MISS.

N. C.

S. C.

VA.

PA. OHIO

N.J.

N.Y.

N.H.

VT.

R.I.

ARK. TERR.

FLA. TERR.

(Free Soil by Missouri Compromise, 1820)

(Joint occupation by United States and Great Britain)

(Admitted as a Free State, 1820)

(Admitted as a Slave State,

1821)

FreeSlaveMissouri Compromise lineSpanish-United States treaty line, 1819

While the debate over Missouri was raging,Thom as Jefferson (1743–1826) wrote to acorresponden t,“The Missouri quest ion . . . is the mostportentous one which ever yet threatenedour Union. In the gloomiest moment of therevolut ionary war I never had anyapprehensions equal to what I feel from thissource. . . . [The] quest ion, like a firebell inthe night , awakened and filled me withterror. . . . [With slavery] we have a wolf bythe ears, and we can neither hold him norsafely let him go.”

John Quincy Adam s con fided to h is diary,“I take it for granted that the presentquest ion is a mere preamble—a t it le-page toa great , t ragic volume.”

it turned out, was the on ly presiden t in Am ericanhistory to be reelected after a term in which a m ajorfinancial pan ic began .

John Marshall andJudicial Nationalism

The upsurging nationalism of the post-Ghen t years,despite the om inous setbacks concern ing slavery,was further reflected and rein forced by the Suprem eCourt. The h igh tribunal con tinued to be dom inatedby the tall, th in , and aggressive Chief Justice JohnMarshall. One group of h is decisions—perhaps them ost fam ous—bolstered the power of the federalgovernm ent at the expense of the states. A notablecase in th is category was McCulloch v. Maryland(1819). The suit involved an attem pt by the state ofMaryland to destroy a branch of the Bank of theUnited States by im posing a tax on its notes. JohnMarshall, speaking for the Court, declared the bankconstitu tional by invoking the Ham ilton ian doc-trine of im plied powers (see p. 195). At the sam etim e, he strengthened federal authority and slappedat state in fringem en ts when he den ied the right ofMaryland to tax the bank. With ringing em phasis, heaffirm ed “that the power to tax involves the power todestroy” and “that a power to create im plies a powerto preserve.”

Marshall’s ruling in this case gave the doctrine of“loose construction” its m ost fam ous form ulation .The Constitution , he said, derived from the consen tof the people and thus perm itted the governm ent toact for their benefit. He further argued that the Con-stitution was “in tended to endure for ages to com eand, consequently, to be adapted to the variouscrises of hum an affairs.” Finally, he declared, “Let theend be legitim ate, let it be within the scope of theConstitution , and all m eans which are appropriate,which are plain ly adapted to that end, which are notprohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit ofthe Constitution , are constitutional.”

Two years later (1821) the case of Cohens v. Vir-gin ia gave Marshall one of h is greatest opportun i-ties to defend the federal power. The Cohens, foundguilty by the Virgin ia courts of illegally selling lotterytickets, appealed to the h ighest tribunal. Virgin ia“won ,” in the sense that the conviction of theCohens was upheld. But in fact Virgin ia and all the

individual states lost, because Marshall resound-ingly asserted the right of the Suprem e Court toreview the decisions of the state suprem e courts inall questions involving powers of the federal govern -m en t. The states’ rights proponen ts were aghast.

Hardly less sign ifican t was the celebrated“steam boat case,’’ Gibbons v. Ogden (1824). The suitgrew out of an attem pt by the state of New York togran t to a private concern a m onopoly of water-borne com m erce between New York and New Jersey.Marshall stern ly rem inded the upstart state that theConstitu tion conferred on Congress alone the con-trol of in terstate com m erce (see Art. I, Sec. VIII,para. 3). He thus struck with one hand another blowat states’ rights, while upholding with the other thesovereign powers of the federal governm ent. In ter-state stream s were cleared of th is judicial snag; the departed sp irit of Ham ilton m ay well haveapplauded.

The Marshall Suprem e Court 247

Settlers of the Old Northwest

The Old Northwest beckoned to settlers after theWar of 1812. The withdrawal of the British protec-

tor weakened the Indians’ grip on the territory. Thenthe transportation boom of the 1820s—steam boatson the Ohio, the National Highway stretching fromPennsylvan ia, the Erie Canal—opened broad arter-ies along which the westward m ovem ent flowed.

The first wave of newcom ers cam e m ain ly fromKentucky, Tennessee, and the upland regions of Vir-gin ia and the Carolinas. Most m igran ts were rough-hewn white farm ers who had been pushed fromgood land to bad by an expanding p lan tation econ-om y. Like Joseph Cress of North Carolina, they wererelieved to relinquish “them old red filds” where you“get noth ing,” in return for acres of new soil that “isas black and rich you wold wan t it.” Som e settlersacquired land for the first tim e. John Palm er, whosefam ily left Ken tucky for Illinois in 1831, recalled h isfather telling h im “of land so cheap that we could all be landholders, where m en were all equal.”Migran ts from the South settled m ain ly in thesouthern portions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.

As Palm er testified, the Old Northwest offeredsouthern farm ers an escape from the lowly socialposition they had endured as nonslaveholders in aslave society. Not that they objected to slavery orsym pathized with blacks. Far from it: by enactingBlack Codes in their new territories, they tried topreven t blacks from following them to paradise.They wan ted their own dem ocratic com m unity, freeof rich p lan ters and African -Am ericans alike.

If southern “Butternuts,” as these settlers werecalled, dom inated settlem en t in the 1820s, the nextdecade brought Yankees from the Northeast. Theywere as land-starved as their southern coun terparts.A growing population had gobbled up m ost of thegood land east of the Appalachians. Yankee settlerscam e to the Old Northwest, especially to the north-ern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, eager tom ake the region a profitable breadbasket for theAtlan tic seaboard. Un like Butternuts who wan ted toquit forever the im posing fram ework of southernsociety, northerners hoped to re-create the worldthey had left behind.

248

Conflict soon em erged between Yankees andsoutherners. As self-sufficien t farm ers with littlein terest in producing for the m arket, the southernersviewed the northern newcom ers as inhospitable,greedy, and excessively am bitious. “Yankee” becam ea term of reproach; a person who was cheated wassaid to have been “Yankeed.” Northerners, in turn ,viewed the southerners as uncivilized, a “coon dogand butcher kn ife tribe” with no in terest in educa-tion , self-im provem ent, or agricultural innovation .Yankees, eager to tam e both the land and its people,wanted to establish public schools and build roads,canals, and railroads—and they advocated taxes to fund such progress. Southerners opposed all thesereform s, especially public schooling, which theyregarded as an attem pt to northern ize their children .

Religion divided settlers as well. Northerners,typically Congregationalists and Presbyterians,wanted their m in isters to be educated in sem inaries.Southerners em braced the m ore revivalist Baptistand Methodist denom inations. They preferred poor,hum ble preacher-farm ers to professionally trainedpreachers whom they viewed as too distan t from theLord and the people. As the Baptist preacher Alexan-der Cam pbell put it, “The schem e of a learned priest-hood . . . has long since proved itself to be a granddevice to keep m en in ignorance and bondage.”

Not everyone, of course, fitted neatly in to thesem olds. Abraham Lincoln , with roots in Ken tucky,

cam e to adopt views m ore akin to those of the Yankees than the southerners, whereas h is NewEngland–born archrival, Stephen Douglas, carefullycultivated the Butternut vote for the Illinois Dem o-cratic party.

As the population swelled and the regionacquired its own character, the stark con trastsbetween northerners and southerners started tofade. By the 1850s northerners dom inated num eri-cally, and they succeeded in establish ing publicschools and fashion ing in ternal im provem ents.Railroads and Great Lakes sh ipping tied the regionever m ore tightly to the northeast. Yankees andsoutherners som etim es allied as new kinds of cleav-ages em erged—between rich and poor, betweencity dwellers and farm ers, and, once Irish and Ger-m an im m igran ts started pouring in to the region ,between native Protestan ts and newcom er Cath-olics. Still, echoes of the clash between Yankees andButternuts persisted. During the Civil War, thesouthern coun ties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois,where southerners had first settled, harbored sym -pathizers with the South and served as a key area forConfederate m ilitary in filtration in to the North .Decades later these sam e coun ties becam e a strong-hold of the Ku Klux Klan . The Old Northwest m ayhave becom e firm ly anchored econom ically to theNortheast, but vestiges of its early dual personalitypersisted.

249

Judicial Dikes AgainstDemocratic Excesses

Another sheaf of Marshall’s decisions bolsteredjudicial barriers against dem ocratic or dem agogicattacks on property rights.

The notorious case of Fletcher v. Peck (1810)arose when a Georgia legislature, swayed by bribery,gran ted 35 m illion acres in the Yazoo River coun try(Mississippi) to private speculators. The next legis-lature, yielding to an angry public outcry, canceledthe crooked transaction . But the Suprem e Court,with Marshall presiding, decreed that the legislativegran t was a con tract (even though fraudulen tlysecured) and that the Constitu tion forbids statelaws “im pairing’’ con tracts (Art. I, Sec. X, para. 1).The decision was perhaps m ost noteworthy as fur-ther protecting property rights against popularpressures. It was also one of the earliest clear asser-tions of the right of the Suprem e Court to invalidatestate laws conflicting with the federal Constitu tion .

A sim ilar princip le was upheld in the case ofDartm outh College v. Woodward (1819), perhaps thebest rem em bered of Marshall’s decisions. The col-lege had been gran ted a charter by King George IIIin 1769, but the dem ocratic New Ham pshire statelegislature had seen fit to change it. Dartm outhappealed the case, em ploying as counsel its m ostdistinguished alum nus, Dan iel Webster (’01). The“Godlike Dan iel’’ reportedly pulled out all the stopsof h is tear-inducing eloquence when he declaim ed,“It is, sir, as I have said, a sm all college. And yet thereare those who love it.’’

Marshall needed no dram atics in the Dart-m outh case. He put the states firm ly in their p lacewhen he ru led that the original charter m ust stand.It was a con tract—and the Constitu tion protectedcon tracts against state encroachm ents. The Dart-m outh decision had the fortunate effect of safe-guarding business en terprise from dom ination bythe states’ governm ents. But it had the unfortunateeffect of creating a preceden t that enabled char-tered corporations, in later years, to escape thehandcuffs of needed public con trol.

If John Marshall was a Molding Father of theConstitu tion , Dan iel Webster was an ExpoundingFather. Tim e and again he left h is seat in the Senate,stepped downstairs to the Suprem e Court cham ber(then located in the Capitol building), and thereexpounded h is Federalistic and nationalistic philos-

ophy before the suprem e bench. The em inen t chiefjustice, so Webster reported, approvingly drank inthe fam iliar argum ents as a baby sucks in itsm other’s m ilk. The two m en dovetailed strikinglywith each other. Webster’s classic speeches in theSenate, challenging states’ rights and nullification ,were largely repetitious of the argum ents that hehad earlier presen ted before a sym patheticSuprem e Court.


When Suprem e Court chief ju stice JohnMarshall died, a New York newspaperrejoiced:“The chief place in the supreme t ribunal ofthe Union will no longer be filled by a manwhose polit ical doct rines led him always . . .to st rengthen government at the expense ofthe people.”

Marshall’s decisions are felt even today. In th issense h is nationalism was the m ost tenaciouslyenduring of the era. He buttressed the federal Un ionand helped to create a stable, nationally un iformenvironm ent for business. At the sam e tim e, Mar-shall checked the excesses of popularly elected statelegislatures. In an age when white m anhood suf-frage was flowering and Am erica was veering towardstronger popular con trol, Marshall alm ost single-handedly shaped the Constitu tion along conserva-tive, cen tralizing lines that ran som ewhat coun ter tothe dom inan t sp irit of the new coun try. Throughhim the conservative Ham ilton ians partly tri-um phed from the tom b.

Sharing Oregon and Acquiring Florida

The robust nationalism of the years after the War of1812 was likewise reflected in the shaping of foreignpolicy. To th is end, the nationalistic Presiden t Mon-roe team ed with h is nationalistic secretary of state,John Quincy Adam s, the cold and scholarly son ofthe frosty and bookish ex-presiden t. The youngerAdam s, a statesm an of the first rank, happily roseabove the ingrown Federalist sectionalism of h isnative New England and proved to be one of thegreat secretaries of state.

To its credit, the Monroe adm in istration negoti-ated the m uch-underrated Treaty of 1818 withBritain . This pact perm itted Am ericans to share thecoveted Newfoundland fisheries with their Cana-

dian cousins. This m ultisided agreem en t also fixedthe vague northern lim its of Louisiana along theforty-n in th parallel from the Lake of the Woods(Minnesota) to the Rocky Mountains (see the m apbelow). The treaty further provided for a ten -yearjoin t occupation of the un tam ed Oregon Coun try,without a surrender of the rights or claim s of eitherAm erica or Britain .

To the south lay sem itropical Span ish Florida,which m any Am ericans believed geography andprovidence had destined to becom e part of theUnited States. Am ericans already claim ed WestFlorida, where un invited Am erican settlers had torndown the hated Span ish flag in 1810. Congress rati-fied th is grab in 1812, and during the War of 1812against Spain’s ally, Britain , a sm all Am erican arm yseized the Mobile region . But the bulk of Floridarem ained, taun tingly, under Span ish ru le.

When an epidem ic of revolutions broke out in South Am erica, notably in Argen tina (1816),Venezuela (1817), and Chile (1818), Spain wasforced to denude Florida of troops to fight therebels. General Andrew Jackson , idol of the West andscourge of the Indians, saw opportun ity in theundefended swam plands. On the pretext that hos-tile Sem inole Indians and fugitive slaves were usingFlorida as a refuge, Jackson secured a com m issionto en ter Span ish territory, pun ish the Indians, andrecapture the runaways. But he was to respect allposts under the Span ish flag.

Early in 1818 Jackson swept across the Floridaborder with all the fury of an avenging angel. Hehanged two Indian chiefs without cerem ony and,

Oregon and Florida 251

Columbia R.Missouri R.

Lake ofthe Woods

Mississippi R.Snake R.

Fras

erR.

Platte R.

CANADA

UNITED STATES

OREGONCOUNTRY(10-year joint

occupation, renewable) 49°

RockyM

ountains

Natural boundary of Louisiana TerritoryTreaty boundary

U.S.-Brit ish Boundary Set t lement ,1818 Note that the United Statesgained considerable territory bysecuring a treaty boundary ratherthan the natural boundary of theMissouri River watershed. The lineof 49° was extended westward tothe Pacific Ocean under the Treatyof 1846 with Britain (see p. 380).

after hasty m ilitary trials, executed two British sub-jects for assisting the Indians. He also seized the twom ost im portan t Span ish posts in the area, St. Marksand then Pensacola, where he deposed the Span ishgovernor, who was lucky enough to escape Jackson’sjerking noose.

Jackson had clearly exceeded h is in structionsfrom Washington . Alarm ed, Presiden t Monroe con-sulted h is cabinet. Its m em bers were for disavowingor discip lin ing the overzealous Jackson—all exceptthe lone wolf John Quincy Adam s, who refused tohowl with the pack. An arden t patriot and national-ist, the flin ty New Englander took the offensive anddem anded huge concessions from Spain .

In the m islabeled Florida Purchase Treaty of1819, Spain ceded Florida, as well as shadowy Span-ish claim s to Oregon , in exchange for Am erica’sabandonm ent of equally m urky claim s to Texas,soon to becom e part of independen t Mexico. The

hitherto vague western boundary of Louisiana wasm ade to run zigzag along the Rockies to the forty-second parallel and then to turn due west to thePacific, dividing Oregon from Span ish holdings.

The Menace of Monarchy in America

After the Napoleon ic n ightm are, the rethronedautocrats of Europe banded together in a kind ofm onarchical protective association . Determ ined torestore the good old days, they undertook to stam pout the dem ocratic tendencies that had sproutedfrom soil they considered richly m anured by theideals of the French Revolution . The world m ust bem ade safe from dem ocracy.

The crowned despots acted prom ptly. Withcom plete ru th lessness they sm othered the em bersof rebellion in Italy (1821) and in Spain (1823).According to the European rum or factory, they werealso gazing across the Atlan tic. Russia, Austria, Prus-sia, and France, acting in partnership, would pre-sum ably send powerful fleets and arm ies to therevolted colon ies of Span ish Am erica and thererestore the autocratic Span ish king to h is ancestraldom ains.

Many Am ericans were alarm ed. Sym pathetic to dem ocratic revolutions everywhere, they had


Battle of Horseshoe Bend(March 1814)

Battle of NewOrleans (Jan. 1815)

Mississippi R.

BatonRouge

MobilePensacola St. Marks

MISSISSIPPI TERR.

WEST FLORIDA

GEORGIALA.

EAST FLORIDA

S.C.

To U.S. 1810To U.S. 1812–1813To U.S. 1819Jackson's route, 1814Jackson's route, 1818

The Southeast , 1810–1819

cheered when the Latin Am erican republics rosefrom the ru ins of m onarchy. Am ericans feared thatif the European powers in tervened in the NewWorld, the cause of republican ism would sufferirreparable harm . The physical security of theUnited States—the m other lode of dem ocracy—would be endangered by the proxim ity of powerfuland unfriendly forces.

The southward push of the Russian bear, fromthe chill region now known as Alaska, had alreadypublicized the m enace of m onarchy to North Am er-ica. In 1821 the tsar of Russia issued a decreeextending Russian jurisdiction over one hundredm iles of the open sea down to the line of 51°, an area that em braced m ost of the coast of presen t-day British Colum bia. The energetic Russians hadalready established trading posts alm ost as far southas the en trance to San Francisco Bay, and the fearprevailed in the Un ited States that they were p lan -n ing to cut the Republic off from Californ ia, itsprospective window on the Pacific.

Great Britain , still Mistress of the Seas, was nowbeginn ing to p lay a lone-hand role on the com pli-cated in ternational stage. In particular, it recoiledfrom join ing hands with the con tinen tal Europeanpowers in crushing the newly won liberties of the Span ish-Am ericans. These revolution ists hadthrown open their m onopoly-bound ports to out-side trade, and British sh ippers, as well as Am eri-cans, had found the profits sweet.

Accordingly, in August 1823, George Cann ing,the haughty British foreign secretary, approachedthe Am erican m in ister in London with a startlingproposition . Would not the Un ited States com binewith Britain in a join t declaration renouncing anyin terest in acquiring Latin Am erican territory, andspecifically warn ing the European despots to keeptheir harsh hands off the Latin Am erican republics?The Am erican m in ister, lacking instructions,referred th is fateful schem e to h is superiors inWashington .

Monroe and His Doctrine

The tenacious nationalist, Secretary Adam s, washardheaded enough to be wary of Britons bearinggifts. Why should the lordly British , with the m ighti-est navy afloat, need Am erica as an ally—an Am er-

ica that had neither naval nor m ilitary strength?Such a un ion , argued Adam s, was undign ified—likea tiny Am erican “cockboat” sailing “in the wake ofthe British m an-of-war.”

Adam s, ever alert, thought that he detected thejoker in the Cann ing proposal. The British fearedthat the aggressive Yankees would one day seizeSpan ish territory in the Am ericas—perhaps Cuba—which would jeopardize Britain’s possessions in theCaribbean . If Cann ing could seduce the UnitedStates in to join ing with h im in support of the terri-torial in tegrity of the New World, Am erica’s ownhands would be m orally tied.

A self-denying alliance with Britain would noton ly ham per Am erican expansion , concludedAdam s, but it was unnecessary. He suspected—cor-rectly—that the European powers had not hatchedany defin ite p lans for invading the Am ericas. In anyeven t the British navy would preven t the approachof hostile fleets because the South Am erican m ar-kets had to be kept open at all costs for British m er-chan ts. It was presum ably safe for Uncle Sam ,behind the protective wooden petticoats of theBritish navy, to blow a defian t, nationalistic blast atall of Europe. The distresses of the Old World set thestage once again for an Am erican dip lom atic coup.

The Monroe Doctrine was born late in 1823,when the nationalistic Adam s won the nationalisticMonroe over to h is way of th inking. The presiden t,in h is regular annual m essage to Congress onDecem ber 2, 1823, incorporated a stern warn ing tothe European powers. Its two basic features were (1) noncolon ization and (2) non in terven tion .

Monroe first directed h is verbal volley prim arilyat the lum bering Russian bear in the Northwest. Heproclaim ed, in effect, that the era of colon ization inthe Am ericas had ended and that henceforth thehun ting season was perm anen tly closed. What thegreat powers had they m ight keep, but neither theynor any other Old World governm ents could seize orotherwise acquire m ore.

At the sam e tim e, Monroe trum peted a warningagainst foreign in tervention. He was clearly con-cerned with regions to the south, where fears were feltfor the fledgling Spanish-Am erican republics. Mon-roe bluntly directed the crowned heads of Europe tokeep their hated m onarchical system s out of thishem isphere. For its part the United States would notin tervene in the war that the Greeks were then fight-ing against the Turks for their independence.

The Monroe Doctrine 253

Monroe’s Doctrine Appraised

The erm ined m onarchs of Europe were angered atMonroe’s doctrine. Having resen ted the incendiaryAm erican experim ent from the beginn ing, they werenow deeply offended by Monroe’s high-flown pro-nouncem ent—all the m ore so because of the gulfbetween Am erica’s loud pretensions and its soft m ili-tary strength. But though offended by the upstartYankees, the European powers found their handstied, and their frustration increased their annoyance.Even if they had worked out p lans for invading theAm ericas, they would have been helpless before theboom ing broadsides of the British navy.

Monroe’s solem n warn ing, when issued, m adelittle sp lash in the newborn republics to the south .Anyone could see that Uncle Sam was on ly secon-darily concerned about h is neighbors, because hewas prim arily concerned about defending h im selfagainst fu ture invasion . On ly a relatively few edu-cated Latin Am ericans knew of the m essage, andthey generally recogn ized that the British navy—notthe paper pronouncem ent of Jam es Monroe—stoodbetween them and a hostile Europe.

In tru th , Monroe’s m essage did not have m uchcon tem porary sign ificance. Am ericans applauded itand then forgot it. Not un til 1845 did Presiden t Polkrevive it, and not un til m idcen tury did it becom e anim portan t national dogm a.

Even before Monroe’s stiff m essage, the tsar haddecided to retreat. This he form ally did in the Russo-Am erican Treaty of 1824, which fixed h is southern -m ost lim its at the line of 54° 40'—the presen tsouthern tip of the Alaska panhandle.

The Monroe Doctrine m ight m ore accuratelyhave been called the Self-Defense Doctrine. Presi-den t Monroe was concerned basically with thesecurity of h is own coun try—not of Latin Am erica.The United States has never willingly perm itted apowerful foreign nation to secure a foothold near itsstrategic Caribbean vitals. Yet in the absence of theBritish navy or other allies, the strength of the Mon-roe Doctrine has never been greater than Am erica’spower to eject the trespasser. The doctrine, as oftennoted, was just as big as the nation’s arm ed forces—and no bigger.

The Monroe Doctrine has had a long career ofups and downs. It was never law—dom estic orin ternational. It was not, techn ically speaking, a


The West and Northwest ,1819–1824 The British Hudson’sBay Company moved to secure itsclaim to the Oregon Country in1824, when it sent a heavily armedexpedition led by Peter SkeneOgden into the Snake River country.In May 1825 Ogden’s partydescended the Bear River “andfound it discharged into a largeLake of 100 miles in length”—oneof the first documented sightings bywhite explorers of Great Salt Lake.(The mountain man Jim Bridger isusually credited with being the firstwhite man to see the lake.)

pledge or an agreem en t. It was m erely a sim ple, per-sonalized statem en t of the policy of Presiden t Mon-roe. What one presiden t says, another m ay unsay.And Monroe’s successors have ignored, revived, dis-torted, or expanded the original version , chiefly byadding in terpretations. Like ivy on a tree, it hasgrown with Am erica’s growth.

But the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 was largely anexpression of the post-1812 nationalism energizingthe United States. Although directed at a specific

m enace in 1823, and hence a kind of period p iece,the doctrine proved to be the m ost fam ous of all thelong-lived offspring of that nationalism . While giv-ing voice to a sp irit of patriotism , it sim ultaneouslydeepened the illusion of isolation ism . Many Am eri-cans falsely concluded, then and later, that theRepublic was in fact in sulated from European dan-gers sim ply because it wan ted to be and because, ina nationalistic outburst, Monroe had publiclywarned the Old World powers to stay away.

Chronology 255

Chronology

1810 Fletcher v. Peck ru ling asserts right of theSuprem e Court to invalidate state lawsdeem ed unconstitu tional

1812 United States declares war on BritainMadison reelected presiden t

1812-1813 Am erican invasions of Canada fail

1813 Battle of the Tham esBattle of Lake Erie

1814 Battle of PlattsburghBritish burn WashingtonBattle of Horseshoe BendTreaty of Ghen t signed

1814-1815 Hartford Conven tion

1815 Battle of New Orleans

1816 Second Bank of the United States foundedProtection ist Tariff of 1816Monroe elected presiden t

1817 Madison vetoes Calhoun’s Bonus BillRush-Bagot agreem en t lim its naval arm am ent

on Great Lakes

1818 Treaty of 1818 with BritainJackson invades Florida

1819 Pan ic of 1819Spain cedes Florida to Un ited StatesMcCulloch v. Maryland caseDartm outh College v. Woodward case

1820 Missouri Com prom iseMissouri and Maine adm itted to Un ionLand Act of 1820Monroe reelected

1821 Cohens v. Virgin ia case

1823 Secretary Adam s proposes Monroe Doctrine

1824 Russo-Am erican Treaty of 1824Gibbons v. Ogden case

1825 Erie Canal com pleted

For further reading, see page A8 of the Appendix. For web resources, go to http://college.hmco.com.

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