the Monroe Doctrine is found in the turbulent years of the Napoleonic Wars. These wars touched South America, sparking widespread revolution. After peace was re-established in Europe in 1815, Spain began making noises about reclaiming its colonies. President Monroe responded in his 1823 message to Congress with the four principles now known as the Monroe Doctrine:
1. The Americas were no longer available for colonization by any power.
2. The political system of the Americas was essentially different from that of Europe.
3. The United States would consider any interference by European powers in the Americas a direct threat to U.S. security.
4. The United States would not interfere with existing colonies or with the internal affairs of European nations, nor would the U.S. participate in European wars.
Bad Feelings
The so-called Era of Good Feelings was filled with plenty of distinctly bad feelings, a mixture of present financial hardships and an anxiety-filled foreboding of political and civil calamity just over the horizon.
American System
Monroe and Calhoun were driven by a vision of what came to be called the “American System,” a way of harnessing the full power of the federal government to nurture struggling American industry through a protective tariff to ward off competition from imports; the creation of the Bank of the United States to provide a reliable source of credit to industry; and federal financing of road, canal, and harbor construction. Unfortunately, Monroe and Calhoun were never able to agree on all three of these components. While both supported the bank, Monroe repeatedly vetoed bills to fund “internal improvements”—roads and the like—while he endorsed heavy tariffs. Without adequate transport, Calhoun noted with bitterness, the West could not compete commercially with the East. He also said that the tariff, instead of protecting all American industry, fostered eastern development while operating to keep the isolated West financially strapped. A three-legged stool can stand; a two-legged one cannot. The American economy tottered.
Panic of 1819
Economic conditions in the wake of the War of 1812 read like a recipe for disaster:
Start with a grinding war debt.
Add high tariffs to create commodity inflation.
Stir in wild speculation on western lands opened by the war.
Overextend manufacturing investments.
Pour the whole thing down the drain.
From 1811, when constitutional challenges prevented the rechartering of the Bank of the United States, until 1816, when it was revived under Monroe, a host of shabby state banks rushed to provide credit to practically all comers. Then, when the war broke out, all the state banks (except for those in New England) suspended the practice of converting paper bank notes to gold or silver (“specie”) on demand. The value of all that paper money so recklessly loaned now plummeted. Banks failed, investors collapsed, businesses went belly up.
Monroe’s Second Bank of the United States stepped in with a plan to stabilize the economy by sharply curtailing credit and insisting on the repayment of existing debts in specie. This plan preserved the Bank of the United States, but it hit the nation hard. “The Bank was saved,” one pundit of the day observed, “but the people were ruined.” In the West and South, individuals were particularly hard hit, and these states passed laws to provide debt relief, but not before 1819, when the panic peaked.
The nation ultimately weathered the Panic of 1819, but it created lasting resentment against the Bank of the United States (called “The Monster” by Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton). The panic deepened sectional rivalries, chipping away at the solidarity of the Union. The West and the South mightily resented the economic stranglehold of the Northeast.
Compromise
The deepening gulf between the northern and southern states gaped its widest in 1818-19. At that point, the United States Senate consisted of 22 Senators from northern states and 22 from southern states. Since the era of the Revolution, the balance between the nonslaveholding North and the slaveholding South had been carefully and precariously preserved with the addition of each state. Now, the territory of Missouri petitioned Congress for admission to the Union as a slaveholding state. The balance threatened suddenly to shift, like a heavy burden on the back of a weary laborer.
Representative James Tallmadge of New York responded to Missouri’s petition by introducing an amendment to the statehood bill calling for a ban on the further introduction of slavery into the state (but persons who were slaves in the present territory would remain slaves after the transition to statehood). The amendment also called for the emancipation of all slaves born in the state when they reached 25 years of age. Thus, gradually, slavery would be eliminated from Missouri. The House passed the Tallmadge amendment, but the Senate rejected it—and then adjourned without reaching a decision on Missouri statehood.
When the Senate reconvened, a long and tortured debate began. Northern Senators held that Congress bad the right to ban slavery in new states, whereas the Southerners asserted that new states had the same right as the original 13, to determine whether they would allow slavery or not. Not until March 1820 was a complex compromise reached on this issue, which, in reality, could admit of no satisfactory compromise. Missouri, it was agreed, would be allowed to join the Union as a slave state, but simultaneously, Maine (hitherto a part of Massachusetts) would be admitted as a free state. By this means, the slave state/free state balance was maintained.
Then, looking toward the future, the Missouri Compromise provided that a line would be drawn across the Louisiana Territory at a latitude of 36 Degrees 30’. North of this line, slavery would be forever banned, except in the case of Missouri. Nobody was really pleased with the Missouri Compromise, but it did manage to hold together the increasingly fragile Union for another three decades.
Age of Jackson
The single strongest candidate in the presidential election of 1824 was Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), “Old Hickory,” “The Hero of New Orleans,” the candidate of the people. However, Jackson did not win the election. As the facade of the Era of Good Feelings crumbled away, no party had replaced the Federalists to oppose the Democratic-Republicans. Within the Democratic-Republican camp, however, a host of candidates emerged, each reflecting deep regional divisions. The Tennessee and Pennsylvania state legislatures nominated Jackson, Kentucky nominated Henry Clay, Massachusetts nominated John Quincy Adams, and Congress presented William H. Crawford.
In the subsequent election, Jackson received 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37.
