With the Cessation of Hostilities Another Epoch in Our History Begins.—From the day when Washington proclaimed neutrality in 1793, to the day when the people celebrated, with bonfires and with fireworks, and with public dinners, the return of peace, in 1815, the political and industrial history of the United States is deeply affected by the political history of Europe. It was questions of foreign policy, not of domestic policy, that divided the two parties, that took up the time of Congress, that raised up and pulled down politicians. But after 1815 foreign affairs sank into insignificance, and for the next thirty years the history of the United States is the history of political and economic development of the country to the east of the Mississippi River.
Fall of the Federalists, or Pro-British Party.—The opposition which the Federalists made to the war completed their ruin. In 1816 for the last time they put forward a presidential candidate, carried three states out of nineteen, and expired in the effort. During the eight years of Monroe’s administration (1817-1825) but one great and harmonious party ruled the political destinies of the country. This remarkable period has come down to us in history as the “era of good feelings.” It was indeed such an era, and so good were the feelings that in 1820 when Monroe was re-elected no competitor was named to run against him. Every state, every electoral vote save one was his. Even that one was his. But the elector who controlled it threw it away on John Quincy Adams lest Monroe should have the unanimous vote of the presidential electors, an honor which has been bestowed on no man save Washington.
Rise of the Protective Tariff Policy.—In the midst of this harmony, however, events were fast ripening for a great schism. Under the protection offered by the commercial restrictions which began with the embargo and ended with the peace, manufactures had sprung up and flourished. If they were to continue to flourish they must continue to be protected, and the question of free trade and protection rose for the first time into really national importance.
The rush of population into the West led to the admission of Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), and Missouri (1820) into the Union, and brought up for serious discussion the uses to be made of public lands lying within them.
The steamboat, which had been adopted far and wide, had produced a demand for some improved means of communication by land to join the greater water highways of the country and opened the era of internal improvements.
The application of Missouri for admission into the Union brought up the question of the admission of slavery to the west of the Mississippi. A series of decisions of the Supreme Court, setting aside acts of the state legislatures, gave new prominence to the question of state rights.
A Decade of Great Political Contests.—The Missouri question was settled by the famous Compromise of 1820 (the first great political compromise), which drew the line thirty-six degrees thirty minutes from the Mississippi to the hundredth meridian, and pledged all to the north of it, save Missouri, to freedom. But the others were not to be settled by compromise, and in the campaign of 1824 the once harmonious Republican party was rent in pieces. Each of the four quarters of the Republic put a candidate in the field and “the scrub-race for the presidency” began.
The new manufacturing interests of the East put forward John Quincy Adams. The West, demanding internal improvements at public expense, had for its candidate Henry Clay. William H. Crawford of Georgia (nominated by a caucus of Congressmen) represented the old Republican party of the South. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee stood for the new Democracy, for the people, with all their hatred of monopolies and class control, their prejudices, their half formed notions, their violent outbursts of feeling.
Behind none of them was there an organized party. But taking the name of “Adams men” and “Clay men,” “Crawford men” and “Jackson men,” the friends of each entered the campaign and lost it. No candidate secured a majority of the electoral college, and the House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams.
The Triumph of Democracy and Industrial Expansion.—Under the administration of Adams (1825-1829) the men who wished for protection and the men who wished for internal improvements at government expense united, took the name first of National Republicans, and then of Whigs, and, led on by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, carried through the high protection tariffs of 1828 and 1832. The friends of Jackson and Crawford took the name of Democrats, won the election of 1829, and during twelve years governed the country.