The Second War for
Independence and the Upsurge
of Nationalism 1812-1824
The Three U.S. Invasions of 1812
Presidential
Election of 1812
(with electoral
vote by state)
Campaigns of 1813
Death of Tecumseh,
Battle of the Thames, 1813
Washington D.C., Fort McHenry, and
New Orleans
• In August 1814, British troops
landed in the Chesapeake
Bay area, entered
Washington D.C. and burned
most of the buildings there
• At Baltimore, another British
fleet arrived but was beaten
back by the privateer
defenders of Fort McHenry,
where Francis Scott Key
wrote “The Star Spangled
Banner”
• Andrew Jackson led a force
of 7,000 and defeated 8,000
British troops that had
launched a frontal attack in
the Battle of New Orleans
on January 8, 1815
Federalist Grievances and the
Hartford Convention
• As the capture of New Orleans
seemed imminent, five New
England States secretly met in
Hartford from December 15,
1814 to January 5, 1815, to
discuss their grievances and to
seek redress for their wrongs
• While a few talked about
secession, most wanted
financial assistance from
Washington to compensate for
lost trade, and an amendment
requiring a 2/3 majority for all
declarations of embargos,
except during invasion
• The Hartford Convention
proved to be the death of the
Federalist Party
The Treaty of Ghent
• At first, the confident British
made sweeping demands, but
the Americans, led by John
Quincy Adams, refused
• The Treaty of Ghent, signed
on December 24, 1814, was an
armistice, acknowledging a
draw in the war and ignoring
any other demands of either
side
• In 1817, after a heated naval
arms race in the Great Lakes,
the Rush-Bagot Treaty
between the U.S. and Britain
provided the world’s longest
unfortified boundary (5,527 mi.)
Peace, by John Rubens Smith
Nascent Nationalism and “The
American System”
• The most impressive by-product of
the War of 1812 was a heightened
nationalism
• After the war, British competitors
dumped their goods onto America at
cheap prices, so America responded
with the Tariff of 1816
• In 1824, Henry Clay established a
program called the American
System, which advocated for
internal improvements
– The system had a strong banking system
– It advocated a protective tariff behind
which eastern manufacturing would
flourish
– It also included a network of roads and
canals, especially in the burgeoning Ohio
Valley, to be funded for by the tariffs
Henry Clay
The So-Called Era of Good
Feelings
• James Monroe defeated his
Federalist opponent in 1816 and
ushered in a short period of oneparty rule
• A Boston newspaper even went
as far as to declare that an “Era
of Good Feelings” had began
• However, sectional troubles
grew when the South did not like
the tariff saying it only benefited
the North and made the South
pay higher prices
• The South also disliked the
internal improvements linking
the North and West
James Monroe
The Panic of 1819 and Growing
Pains of the West
• The panic of 1819 was a
paralyzing economic panic (the
first since Washington’s times)
that engulfed the U.S.
• The West was especially hard
hit, and the Bank of the U.S.
was soon blamed
• The explosive expansion of the
west was due in part to the
cheap land, the elimination of
the Indian menace, the “Ohio
Fever,” and the need for land
by the tobacco farmers
• The Land Act of 1820
authorized a buyer to purchase
80 acres of land at a minimum
of $1.25 an acre in cash
Building the National Road
Slavery and the Sectional Balance
• Sectional tensions between
the North and the South
came to a boil when
Missouri wanted to become
a slave state
• The House of
Representatives passed the
Tallmadge Amendment to
eradicate slavery in
Missouri, but it was
defeated in the Senate
• Finally, the deadlock was
broken by a bundle of
compromises known as the
Missouri Compromise
The Missouri Compromise and Slavery, 1820-1821
John Marshall and Judicial
Nationalism
• Chief Justice John
Marshall helped to bolster
the power of the government
at the expense of the states
• McCulloch vs. Maryland
(1819) and Gibbons vs.
Ogden (1824) limited states’
powers
• Marshall’s rulings gave the
Supreme Court its powers
and greatly strengthened the
federal government, giving it
power to overrule state
governments sometimes
Chief Justice John Marshall
U.S.-British Boundary Settlement, 1818
The
Southeast,
1810-1819
Monroe and His Doctrine
• Late in 1823, the Monroe
Doctrine was born,
incorporating noncolonization and
nonintervention
• In the Russo-American
Treaty of 1824, the Russian
tsar fixed the southern
boundary of his Alaskan
territory at 54°40’
• The Monroe Doctrine was
mostly an expression of
post-1812 U.S. nationalism,
it encouraged patriotism,
and added to the illusion of
isolationism
The West
and
Northwest,
1819-1824