The
“Era of Good Feelings”?
(1816 -1824)
Susan M. Pojer
Horace Greeley HS Chappaqua, NY
Essential Question:
What were the major
characteristics of the ”Era of
Good Feeling? ”
The Election of 1816
[The Demise of the Federalist Party!]
James Monroe [1816-1824]
John Quincy Adams
(Secretary of State)
A bulldog among spaniels!
The Convention of 1818
• Rush-Bagot agreement and the
Convention of 1818 marked an
important turning point in AngloAmerican and American-Canadian
relations.
• The Rush-Bagot Pact was an
agreement between the United States
and Great Britain to eliminate their
fleets from the Great Lakes, excepting
small patrol vessels.
• The Convention of 1818 set the western
boundary between the United States
and British North America (later
Canada) at the forty-ninth parallel up to
the Rocky Mountains.
• Both agreements reflected the easing
of diplomatic tensions that had led to
the War of 1812 and marked the
beginning of Anglo-American
cooperation.
• Oregon was to be jointly occupied by
both British and American settlers.
• The Maine-Canada border would be
decided in 1846.
The West & the NW: 1819-1824
Adams-Onis Treaty, 1819
[“The Transcontinental Treaty”]
• The treaty was named for John Quincy
Adams of the United States and Louis de
Onís of Spain and renounced any claim of
the United States to Texas.
• It fixed the western boundary of the
Louisiana Purchase as beginning at the
mouth of the Sabine River and running along
its south and west bank to the thirty-second
parallel and thence directly north to the Río
Rojo (Red River).
US Population Density
1810
1820
The American System
p Tariff of 1816
p Chartering of the
Second Bank of the
United States [BUS].
Henry Clay,
“The Great
Compromiser”
p Internal improvements
at federal expense.
- National Road
• Henry Clay's "American System,"
devised in the burst of nationalism that
followed the War of 1812, remains one
of the most historically significant
examples of a government-sponsored
program to harmonize and balance the
nation's agriculture, commerce, and
industry.
• This "System" consisted of three mutually
reenforcing parts:
– a tariff to protect and promote American industry;
– a national bank to foster commerce; and federal
subsidies for roads, canals,
– and other "internal improvements" to develop
profitable markets for agriculture.
• Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from
tariffs and sales of public lands.
• In the years from 1816 to 1828, Congress enacted
programs supporting each of the American System's
major elements.
The American System:
The National [Cumberland] Road
The Erie Canal
E
E
E
1817 – 1825.
363 miles Albany to Buffalo.
Much further than any other American or European canal.
The American System
 WEST  got roads, canals, and
federal aide.
 EAST  got the backing of
protective tariffs from the
West.
 SOUTH  ??
The Panic of 1819
CAUSES???
• The Panic of 1819 initiated the nation's first major
depression.
• It resulted from a confluence of national and
international events. In the heady atmosphere after
the War of 1812, both U.S. imports and exports
surged.
• European demand for American goods, especially
agricultural staples like cotton, tobacco, and flour,
increased. To feed the overheated economy, state
banks proliferated, and credit was easy.
• The Bank of the United States, far from
helping the economy, was among the
destabilizing forces that led to the
depression of 1819.
• At the same time, swelling crop yields in
Europe reduced the demand for American
farm products, whose prices plunged. An
economic contraction in Europe led banks
there to reduce credit. The crisis abroad,
coupled with the contraction at home, forced
American banks to call in their loans as well.
• By early 1819, credit, once so easy, was unavailable
to many Americans. With specie reserves depleted
many American banks failed, and other businesses
followed. Sales of public lands plummeted.
• Unemployment soared, and in some regions food
and other basic necessities were difficult to come
by.
• Especially hard hit were cities outside of New
England like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and
Cincinnati.
• Farmers suffered too, though many survived by
resuming a subsistence lifestyle.
• The Panic of 1819 fostered mistrust of
banks, bankers and paper money.
• The volatile Tennessee politician Davy
Crockett spoke for many when he
dismissed "the whole banking system"
as nothing more than "a species of
swindling on a large scale."
• This mistrust of corporations was aggravated by
landmark decisions handed down in 1819 by the
Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall.
• In Dartmouth College v. Woodward, the Supreme
Court protected private corporations against
interference by the state governments that had
created them.
• In McCullough v. Maryland, it ruled that the Bank of
the United States, though privately run, was a
creation of the federal government that could not be
touched by the states.
• These pro-capitalist court rulings aggravated class
divisions, which escalated over the next decade.
The Election of 1820
The Compromise of 1820:
A Firebell in the Night!
The Tallmadge Amendment
 All slaves born in Missouri after the
territory became a state would be freed
at the age of 25.
 Passed by the House, not in the Senate.
 The North controlled the House, and the
South had enough power to block it in
the Senate.
The Monroe Doctrine, 1823
 Referred to as
“America’s Self-Defense
Doctrine”
1. What foreign
policy
principles are
established?
2. What warning is given
to the European
countries?
Monroe
Doctrine
3. What would the
US do if the
warning was not
headed?
• Little noted by the Great Powers of Europe,
but eventually became a longstanding tenet
of U.S. foreign policy. Monroe and his
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams drew
upon a foundation of American diplomatic
ideals such as disentanglement from
European affairs and defense of neutral
rights as expressed in Washington’s
Farewell Address and Madison’s stated
rationale for waging the War of 1812.
• The three main concepts of the doctrine
– separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe,
– non-colonization,
– and non-intervention
were designed to signify a clear break between the
New
World and the autocratic realm of Europe.
• Monroe’s administration forewarned the imperial
European powers against interfering in the affairs of
the newly independent Latin American states or
potential United States territories.
• While Americans generally objected to European
colonies in the New World, they also desired to
increase United States influence and trading ties
throughout the region to their south.
• European mercantilism posed the greatest obstacle
to economic expansion. In particular, Americans
feared that Spain and France might reassert
colonialism over the Latin American peoples who
had just overthrown European rule.
• Signs that Russia was expanding its presence
southward from Alaska toward the Oregon Territory
were also disconcerting.