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52 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Shay's Rebellion
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1785-86--This rebellion of farmers in western Massachusetts against their state government (because of the unfairness of taxes that fell too heavily on people in the western part of the state) influenced people in Massachusetts and in other states to fear for the future of the country if a stronger central government were not adopted. The fear was that such rebellions as Shays' would proliferate because of a lack of nationally enforced standards and that, because the central government was weak (no military), nothing could ever be done to prevent such rebellions from eventually causing states to grow apart and to separate from each other. This being the case, the historical impact of Shays' Rebellion was to convince people in the U.S. to support the movement for a new constitution--which led to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787.
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Constitutional Convention
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1787--the delegates at this convention were authorized to revise the Articles of Confederation, but apparently had the wisdom to realize that it was better to scrap the Articles and to start with a brand new constitution (even if that meant exceeding their authority). These delegates were largely younger men under the age of 45who were mostly lawyers with experience in government. They were all familiar with the natural rights and social contract philosophy of John Locke--and they were all familiar with Montesquieu's conception of republican government. That is to say, the framers of the U.S. Constitution were largely men of common experience, training, and education who pretty much agreed on what they wanted to accomplish in framing a new constitution. Little controversy or disagreement marred the proceedings at this convention, presided over by George Washington. James Madison was the most active delegate (and would later become known as the "father of the U.S. Constitution" for his role in coordinating the way that different groups of delegates came to see how the parts of the Constitution (on which they were working) would come together as a whole.
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The Great Compromise
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1787--This refers to settlement of the issue between those at the Constitutional Convention who preferred a plan favoring representation of small states and those who backed the plan that favored large states. The compromise produced the U.S. Congress as we know it: a bicameral legislature in which state representation in the lower house (from which tax bills originate) is according to population while all the states are equally represented in the upper house, or Senate.
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3/5 Compromise
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1787 The only other major issue at the Constitutional Convention concerned how to count slaves as a part of the population of southern states. If they were counted in the same way as the free population, then southern states would have more Representatives in Congress than if they weren't counted. Yet, if they weren't counted, then southern states would get off light when it came to federal taxes levied on the states. The compromise on this issue, then, was to count a slave as 3/5 of a person so that southern states were not so blatantly over-represented in Congress and still paid their fair share of the taxes. Unfortunately, however, this provision of the Constitution to count slaves this way, for the purposes of determining representation and taxation, is what wrote slavery into the U.S. Constitution.
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Federalist Papers
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1788--85 essays (50 written by Alexander Hamilton, 30 by James Madison, and 5 by John Jay) that explain the Constitution that the framers had produced with a view toward encouraging voters to ratify the Constitution. During 1788, after 9 states had ratified the new Constitution, it could be put into effect. But Americans were hesitant to start a new governmental system in a situation in which New York and Virginia had failed to ratify. These were the two largest states and hardly anyone wanted to start the nation on a new career without these states in the Union. The Federalist Papers were an effort to persuade voters in these states to ratify. The aim was to explain the Constitution and to assuage fears of the stronger central government that the Constitution would create. In the end, the Federalist Papers failed to accomplish this purpose as Virginia and New York ratified the Constitution only on the promise that the first Congress would amend the Constitution with a Bill of Rights (to protect individuals from the threat of abuse by the government). Still, the Federalist Papers continue today to be useful in that, often, lawmakers and courts must try to determine the original intent of the framers when interpreting the Constitution--and the Federalist Papers is the best source of original intent.
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Bill of Rights
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1789--In keeping with the promise to voters of New York and Virginia, the first Congress under the new Constitution added ten new amendments to the Constitution, all of which were designed to define and to protect the rights of individual citizens of the United States of America. Since the new government under the new Constitution was much stronger than under the Articles of Confederation, there was fear that this new government would abridge individual liberties. The Bill of Rights was introduced to provide guarantees against this.
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Ratification
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the process by which the Constitution was approved by the states. This was done either by vote of the people in a special plebiscite (or election) or by vote of delegates to a convention within a state, held for the purpose of either rejecting or approving the Constitution.
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Hamilton's Funding Plan
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1791-1797 (during the Washington Administration) This was the plan by which Alexander Hamilton, as Secretary of the Treasury, championed a plan of legislative action that would create a national bank and raise taxes so that the nation's debt could be retired and the nation's credit rating restored. The pitiful state of the nation's finances was the most pressing problem facing the first administration of George Washington. For this reason, Hamilton (as Secretary of State) was the most active member of Washington's cabinet. Much of Hamilton's plan became controversial. When opponents to his plan became identified, they tended to come together in political support of each other, giving rise to two political parties--one in support of Hamilton's Funding Plan and the other in opposition to it. So, not only did Hamilton's efforts retire the national debt and place the country on a sound footing financially, for the future, but it also created the political debate that produced the country's first political party system--that of Federalists (supporters of Hamilton) and Democratic-Republicans (opponents of Hamilton).
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Federalist Party
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1791-1816-- Alexander Hamilton and John Adams were the early leaders of this party that favored Hamilton's Funding Plan and showed belief in an activist federal government. Federalists wanted to promote military power and the conquest of an American empire so that the U.S. would join the front rank of world military and economic powers and become a nation much involved in commerce and manufacturing as opposed to becoming a nation of farmers. This meant raising federal taxes and giving the government a source of credit in the creation of the Bank of the United States (the first national bank). Federalists favored federal tariffs, extensive economic regulation, a pro-British foreign policy, and an expansion of military power. They also favored the idea of interpreting the Constitution less literally (or as strictly) as their political opponents, the Democratic-Republicans. The view here is that instead of doing only what the Constitution specifically says can be done, do what needs to be done so long as the Constitution does not specifically forbid it. Although George Washington did not believe in political parties, he supported Hamilton's Funding Plan--which means that the Washington Administration was a Federalist administration. Washington's successor, John Adams, was also a Federalist. There were no other Federalist presidents.
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Democratic-Republicans
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1791-1828--This party, led in its early years by Thomas Jefferson and by James Madison, is also known as the Jeffersonian Party. It is laissez-faire in principle, which means that the belief is in a governmental system that is largely uninterested in regulation of the economy or in interfering in the affairs of citizens. Jefferson believed that the U.S. was a nation of farmers and that it took little government action to make farmers do the things they do. He was against a policy of taxation to raise money for the purpose of expanding military power and then using that power to conquer colonies. Instead, Jefferson believed the U.S. would expand naturally as the frontier moved westward and extended agriculture to a largely unoccupied virgin continent. He thought the creation of the national bank, as a source of loans to the federal government, was both unconstitutional and un-necessary. His opposition to the national bank on constitutional grounds represented the Democratic-Republican belief in "strict construction." This was the idea that in interpreting the Constitution, one should act only according to what the Constitution specifically authorizes one to do, whereas Jefferson's opponents believed in "loose construction," the idea that one can do whatever the Constitution does not specifically forbid. The Democratic-Republican Party became dominant in the U.S. with the election of Jefferson to the presidency in 1800 and the laissez-faire doctrine of the Jeffersonians would dominate American political practice for the rest of the century.
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Strict and Loose Construction
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If one takes the view of the Jeffersonians (of strict construction), this means that one takes a literal view of the Constitution and will not believe it is constitutional to take any action that the Constitution does not specifically authorize. In that case, to do anything that the Constitution does not say can be done, means to amend the Constitution with an amendment giving authority to do it. This would mean constant additions to the Constitution that would amount to constant tampering with the document. But, if one takes the Federalist (or Hamiltonian) view of loose construction, then one takes the view that constant amending of the Constitution is both un-necessary and unwise. Instead, the Hamiltonian says that one should assume that something can be done if there is nothing in the Constitution that says you can't do it--even if there is also nothing in the Constitution that says you can do it. The national bank became the issue that first clarified this debate in that Jeffersonians claimed the bank was unconstitutional, since there is nothing in the document authorizing a national bank, while Federalists saw nothing wrong with the national bank because the Constitution did not specifically say that a national bank was unauthorized. Eventually, the loose-construction idea would prevail in this debate because the strict-construction idea meant constant amending of the Constitution (which would be wasteful of Congress' time and energy and would cause the Constitution to become different than it was when framed. Jefferson himself bore out the truth to this when he found it necessary to violate his own idea of strict construction in 1803. In that year, Jefferson had to decide whether to accept France's offer to buy Louisiana (the Constitution does not authorize the President to purchase land from foreign countries) or put Napoleon off by going to Congress to get an amendment passed which would give the President authority to make the purchase. If he did the latter, it would have been a lengthy procedure, which would have taken even longer because of the necessity of having the states vote to ratify the amendment before it could go into effect. By the time all that was done, would Napoleon's offer to purchase Louisiana still be on the table? The Louisiana Purchase was such a good deal that Jefferson couldn't risk losing it, so he bought the Louisiana Purchase from France--even though the Constitution did not say he could do that. In other words, by making the purchase, Jefferson had become a loose constructionist. Since that time, the practice of loose construction is what has prevailed in interpreting the meaning of the Constitution.
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Treaty of Ft. Greenville
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1795--Towards the end of the Washington Administration, this was an important treaty with the Indian tribes of the Ohio Valley (or NW Territory). It resulted from the military defeat of the tribes in 1795 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers by General "Mad Anthony" Wayne. It meant that American settlement of the Ohio Valley could proceed without fear of sparking more conflict with the Indians of the region--at least until after 1806, when Tecumseh began to incite Indian hostility to American settlement once again. But the treaty was important in 1795 in strengthening the political position of a Federalist administration in the year before the presidential election of 1796 took place.
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Jay's Treaty
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1794--Whereas the Treaty of Ft. Greenville made the Federalists look good, Jay's Treaty was a political embarrassment. This was a treaty between the U.S. and Britain in which the U.S. agreed not to wage war against Britain even though the British did not promise to end any of the evil practices that they had been perpetrating on Americans--such as the boarding and confiscation, at sea, of American merchant ships. American merchant ships were getting caught up in a war between France and Britain in which both sides violated Americans' trading rights as neutrals. Because the Federalists were pro-British in their views of foreign policy, they wanted a treaty with Britain that would keep the peace between the U.S. and Britain, even if the treaty was one that virtually gave Britain the right to violate American neutrality at sea. It was a bad treaty that did keep the peace with Britain but only because it made no demands of any kind on the British. This treaty, coming a year after the Neutrality Proclamation in which the U.S. backed out of our treaty obligations with France, would lead to bad relations with the French and the possibility of the outbreak of war with France.
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Neutrality Proclamation
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1793--the Franco-American Alliance of 1778 was due to run until 1798. Consequently, when Britain declared war on the revolutionary government of France in 1792, the French expected Americans to act as their allies (as the French had done during the American Revolution). But the French Revolution had grown very radical and violent after 1792 and the Washington Administration was pro-British in stance anyway. Accordingly, in 1793, President Washington announced that the U.S. would abrogate American responsibilities under the Franco-American Alliance of 1778 because that alliance had been concluded with the French monarchy and not with the radical government currently in place. Pro-French Democratic-Republicans would oppose this move, but neutrality became American policy and would remain American policy until 1917 when the U.S. entered World War One on the side of France and Britain against Germany.
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Pinckney's Treaty
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1795--This treaty with Spain was one in which the Spanish agreed to allow Americans to use the port at New Orleans (which was then a Spanish city) for the purpose of getting crops to markets by ship. Settlements west of the Appalachians had difficulty reaching markets on the east coast because of the mountains. This made use of barges on the Mississippi River important to getting crops to market. But because the U.S. did not control any land along the Gulf Coast, including such ports as New Orleans, the U.S. needed Spanish permission to use their ports. The Spanish had refused to allow this in the past, but agreed in 1795 because the new American government had a military while the previous government (under the Articles of Confederation) had no military (and consequently no military threat).
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French Revolution
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This revolution against the French monarchy, started in 1789, had become radical by 1792, which caused other European nations (including Britain) to declare war on France out of fear that the revolution in France might spread to other countries. The Jacobins who took power in France in 1792 executed King Louis XVI and his queen Marie Antoinette and began executing everyone who opposed their policies--making the guillotine very busy indeed during 1793 and 1794 because the Jacobins had many political enemies. All of this confusion in France changed the relationship between France and the U.S. from one of friendship to one of enmity and it would cause American merchant shippers to get caught up in the war in Europe--in that, if an American tried to trade with the French, the British tried to prevent that trade from happening and if an American tried to trade with the British, then the French tried to interfere with the trade. Because this war between the British and French would last, on an off, until Napoleon was finally removed to St. Helena Island in 1815, this would cause continuing violations (by both the French and British) of American neutral trading rights for a long time. As long as the Federalists were in power in the U.S., American government was more interested in improving relations with the British, causing hostility from the French. When the Democratic-Republicans assumed power in the U.S. after 1800, American policy became increasingly pro-French and anti-British. Finally, in 1812 the U.S. would declare war on Britain because of British violations of American neutrality (even though the French were equally guilty of the same offense) and the War of 1812 was on.
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Whiskey Rebellion
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1794--Hamilton's Funding Plan had called for immediate payment of all government debts. The money to accomplish this was borrowed by the government from the National Bank. Then, this debt was to be paid off from the collection of federal taxes on the American people. The Whiskey Tax was one such tax. But because this tax fell most heavily on people in a certain area of the country (western areas where crops could not be easily transported--so they were converted into bottles of whiskey) opposition to the tax soon arose. In this case, opposition to the Whiskey tax in western Pennsylvania produced the first rebellion against the government of the U.S. since the ratification of the new Constitution. The Washington Administration took this seriously and sent a large military force to put down the rebellion--because Washington believed it was necessary to prevent future rebellions through deterrence--by showing what the federal response to any rebellion would be. In this case, though, the rebellion was not serious and the response amounted to overkill which caused the administration political embarrassment.
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National Bank (First Bank of the U.S.)
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1791--Chartered in 1791 by Congress for 20 years, the national bank lasted until 1811 when the Madison Administration allowed its charter to expire and Congress did not renew it. The national bank was controversial in 1791, becoming one of the issues that separated the first two political parties in American history. Initially, the bank was capitalized mostly by private sources of money, but would eventually be capitalized to a much greater extent by public money. The bank was to act as the place where the U.S. government deposited money it collected from taxes or tariffs and the bank was a source of loans to the U.S. government whenever loans were needed.
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The XYZ Affair
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1798--Once the U.S. had broken our treaty with the French (with the Neutrality Proclamation) and had concluded a one-sided treaty of friendship (Jay's Treaty) with France's enemy, the British, then the French became increasingly hostile towards the U.S. (after 1794). A state of undeclared warfare between the U.S. and France existed by 1796 on the open seas. In the late 1790s, both France and the U.S. lost over 200 ships to fighting taking place between American and French sailors on merchant and military ships on the oceans of the world. Although no formal declaration of war had taken place, Americans and French were constantly in conflict with each other. President John Adams sent diplomats to negotiate peace with the French but these diplomats were insulted by agents of the French government. Adams referred to these French agents as "X, Y, and Z" in his explanation to Congress of the "XYZ Affair" as it became known. In short, the affair amounted to American diplomats being asked to give large bribes to X,Y, and Z in order to be allowed to talk to the French Foreign Minister. This was an intentional insult. The French knew the bribes would not be offered and so it was just a way of getting the Americans to leave without having to talk to them. Members of the Federalist Party (the party of John Adams, the President) were so incensed by this affair that they wanted President Adams to ask for a formal declaration of war with France (and Congress, dominated by the Federalist Party in 1798, would certainly have voted in favor of such a declaration). Adams, however, did not want war and became willing to seek avenues for peace even though it meant alienating members of his own political party and even though it meant that Adams was ruining his chances of getting re-elected President in 1800. For taking this politically ruinous stand, Adams deserves high praise. Not many presidents in American history have had the guts to stand up for what they believed was the right thing to do (on principle) when they knew that this stand would be politically unpopular or politically damaging. In this case, the stand that Adams took in 1798 made him a one term President but the stand he took was probably the right stand to take in that a war with France was probably not in the best interest of the country at that time in 1798. By contrast, President Madison (leader of the Democratic-Republican Party in 1812) would cave in to the demands of his party to declare war on Britain. Fortunately, the War of 1812 turned out well for the U.S. in the end, but it was, by no means, clear in 1812 that that would be the case. Madison's legacy was saved by the fact that the war ended without a military disaster, but it is very doubtful that Mr. Madison asked for war with Britain in 1812 out of a conviction that such a war was good for the country. In a comparison of the similar circumstances of 1798 and 1812, John Adams emerges looking very much more the idealist, standing on the high ground of principle, than does Madison.
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Sedition Act
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1798--This act of Congress demonstrated for the first time in history that the "guarantees" of liberty, represented by the Bill of Rights, can circumvented by Congress, if Congress chooses to do so. In this case, the Sedition Act made it illegal to criticize or to publicly chastise John Adams or the Federalist-dominated Congress. Although the Sedition Act is a clear violation of the guarantee of free speech under the 1st amendment, it was nevertheless legislated and used to silence the Federalist Party's political opponents. Several newspaper editors who were supportive of the Federalists' political opponents, the Democratic-Republicans, were arrested in violation of the Sedition Act, fined heavily, and jailed. Later, during World War One, in order to silence opposition to the war effort, Congress enacted another Sedition Act, this one in 1918. Both sedition laws were repealed within two or three years of their passage, but they nevertheless show that constitutional rights are not necessarily "guaranteed" under the American system of government.
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Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions
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1798--These were resolutions adopted by the state legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky, which were adopted in response to (in opposition to) the Sedition Act. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolution while Madison wrote the Virginia Resolution. Both resolutions stated the idea that, in the case of a law of Congress--such as the Sedition Act--which is judged by a state's legislature to be unconstitutional, then the state should have the right to declare the law unconstitutional and to protect the people of that state from being subject to that law. These resolutions were statements of states' rights that would provide precedence later for the development of the theory of nullification by John C. Calhoun. This concept of states' rights would also underpin the ideas upon which secession from the Union became justified in the South in 1860 and in 1861.
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The "Revolution of 1800"
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This refers to Thomas Jefferson's election to the presidency in 1800. Since Jefferson was the leader of the Democratic-Republican Party and became President at the same time that his party replaced the Federalist Party as the majority party in Congress, Jefferson commented that a revolution, of sorts, had taken place. It was the first time in American history that a transition of power, from one party to another, had taken place. A significant fact concerning this transition of power from the Federalist to the Democratic-Republican Party was that the transition was a peaceful one. This was significant in that it was not assumed that power could be transferred peacefully in America until it had happened. Since then, a peaceful transition of power has occurred many times whenever one political party has replaced the other as the dominant party in control of Congress, or of the White House, or of both. For example, even though many Democrats did not approve of the way that George Bush, a Republican, was elected in 2000, they accepted the result and did not seek to overturn the election's results through violence or revolution. Prior to 1800, it was not clear that the kind of serious competition taking place between political parties in elections could result in a peaceful transition. But it did in 1800--and in every other important election since.
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Marbury v Madison
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1803--Supreme Court decision that established the power of judicial review as a power of the Supreme Court. This power of the court to review laws of Congress and to strike down laws that are judged to be unconstitutional was not a power given to the Supreme Court by the U.S. Constitution. Rather, this power was assumed by the Supreme Court after 1803 as a result of the way that Chief Justice John Marshall and the rest of the Supreme Court decided this court case.
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Judicial Review
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This is the power of the Supreme Court to review laws of Congress and to strike down laws judged to be unconstitutional. Another court case in 1810 extended the power of judicial review to laws of the states' legislatures as well.
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The Louisiana Purchase
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1803--The size of the U.S. was nearly doubled with the purchase, from France, of Louisiana for 15 million dollars. Louisiana was much larger than the state of Louisiana that joined the Union in 1812. Louisiana, as a colony purchased from the French, stretched from the Louisiana Gulf Coast northward all the way to the western edge of present-day Montana. See map in textbook. This was a wonderful real estate deal (at 3 cents an acre). The 15 million dollars of 1803 is equivalent to 236 million dollars in 2002 dollars. Even after all of the inflation since 1803, this is still a fantastic deal. Little wonder Jefferson couldn't resist violating his own political principles in order to seal this deal with Napoleon before the French dictator changed his mind! Obviously, this purchase looms large in any explanation of the way that the continental U.S. developed during the 19th century.
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Lewis and Clark Expedition
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1804-1806--This expedition, sent out to explore the Louisiana Purchase (and the land beyond to the Pacific Ocean) was led by Jefferson's personal secretary Merriwether Lewis and by William Clark, who was the much younger brother of Revolutionary War hero George Rogers Clark. With this expedition, Americans learned much about what is now the western part of the U.S. but which was largely unknown and unexplored territory early in the 19th century.
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Chesapeake Affair
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1806--This incident represents the beginning of foreign policy problems with European countries (especially Britain) leading up to the War of 1812 during the 2nd administration of Thomas Jefferson. The Chesapeake was an American naval vessel which was attacked and boarded by British sailors from the British naval vessel HMS Leopard. In this boarding incident, three sailors from the Chesapeake were "impressed" by the British into service with the British navy. Since the British believed that many of their sailors had deserted from service in the British navy to service in the American navy or in the American merchant marine, they assumed the right to "impress" such sailors as they could find back into service with the British navy. The British assumed the right to stop and to search American vessels in order to accomplish this. Americans thought it was wrong that the British did this and began to see this British practice as a pretext for war, especially since sometimes the British impressment gangs made mistakes and kidnapped Americans who had never been in the British navy (and were not British deserters).
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Embargo Act
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1807--Enacted by Congress at the request of President Jefferson, this act represented the enactment of what Jefferson called the policy of "peaceable coercion," by which economic sanctions would be used to make Europeans respect the rights of Americans on the seas--instead of resorting to war over anger caused by impressment and by the seizure of American ship cargoes, or by other violations of American neutrality on the high seas. Jefferson did not want to go to war in 1807 over such incidents as the Chesapeake Affair, but he had to respond in some way. Remembering how effective boycotts had been during the years preceding the American Revolution, Jefferson thought that denying American trade to Europeans would bring the Europeans to change their evil ways vis a vis Americans overseas. The Embargo Act shut down all American ports to trade with the outside world until such time as the French and the British (the Europeans who had been guilty of violating American neutrality) declared their intentions to respect American neutral trading rights. Unfortunately, it did not succeed in changing the practices of the Europeans and mostly had the effect of impoverishing Americans who had been dependent on commerce for their livelihood in the past. By leaving this policy in place until the end of his second term, Jefferson became quite an unpopular outgoing President and left his successor, James Madison, with a sticky problem with which to deal as soon as he occupied the White House in 1809. In the end, the policy of peaceable coercion seemed to have failed and the U.S. would declare war on the British in 1812.
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Peaceable Coercion
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1807 –This was Jefferson’s policy of trying to get the British to respect American neutrality without having to declare war on Britain. This idea led to the Embargo Act of 1807 and to President Madison’s versions of Peaceable Coercion, such as the Non-Intercourse Act and Macon’s Bill #2.
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Non-Intercourse Act
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1809—This legislation followed repeal of the Embargo Act. It opened up trade again with everyone in the world except the British and the French. In the case of these two countries, if one suddenly declared that they would begin to respect American neutrality, then the U.S. would start to trade with that country, but not with the other. It was a failed attempt to use economic leverage as a means of getting France and Britain to respect American neutrality.
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Macon’s Bill #2
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1810—Following the failure of the Non-Intercourse Act to persuade either France or Britain to respect American rights to international trade, Macon’s Bill #2 tried to accomplish that purpose in a new way. Whereas Non-intercourse had allowed trade with everyone except France and Britain, Macon’s Bill #2 restores trade with everyone in the world, including France and Britain. But if either one began to respect American neutrality, then we would continue to trade with that country, but would cut off trade with the other. France, for its part, responded in 1810 by telling the U.S. they would respect the neutral rights of American merchant ships (they didn’t really, just said they would) and the U.S. then responded by cutting off trade with Britain, which made the British angry and led to more instances of impressment and confiscation of ship cargoes by the British. By 1812, it did not seem that this method of peaceable coercion was working and Congress began to clamor for war against Britain. Even though France was also guilty of violating American neutrality, Congress preferred to push for war with Britain (and not with France) because only the British were involved in inciting Ohio Valley Indians to become hostile and only the British were impressing American seamen into service with their navy. A great irony is that trade sanctions against Britain (such as with Macon’s Bill #2) actually had begun to make an impact on the British by 1812. British merchants were lobbying Parliament to repeal the legislation that had justified British violation of American shipping rights. Unfortunately, Americans did not learn of the British Parliament’s repeal of the Orders-in-Council in 1812 until the U.S. had already declared war on Britain. However, had Congress known about the British repeal of the Orders-in-Council, which indicated that Macon’s Bill #2 was finally having the desired effect in changing British practice towards American merchants, the U.S. would probably not have declared war on Britain.
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Orders-in-Council
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1806—These were British laws that set up the naval blockade of Europe that the British navy tried to maintain against Napoleon-dominated Europe after 1806. By this time, the war in Europe between France and England had become a military stalemate in which Britain was supreme on the seas while France was superior on land. As such, neither side could defeat the other and the war became an economic war in which each side tried to deny the other from getting access to trade with the outside world. In the case of the British, they tried to deny the French from having access to trade with anyone else in the world (including Americans) by setting up a naval blockade. This meant stationing warships off the European coast which would stop ships trying to reach the French. When the British repealed the orders-in-council on June 16, 1812 they were telling the U.S. that they would no longer interfere with American attempts to trade with France—in effect, they were telling the U.S. that they did not want war with the U.S.on top of the war they were already in against the French. But communications were so bad in those days that the U.S. did not receive word of this until war had already been declared against the British (on June 18).
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Battle of Tippecanoe
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1811—This concerns the Indian tribes of the Ohio Valley (mainly in what is now Indiana) and the conflict that had been developing between the tribes led by Tecumseh and the forces of the Ohio Territory governor William Henry Harrison. While Tecumseh was away on a diplomatic trip to visit Indian tribes in the South, Harrison attacked and defeated the Indians at the Battle of Tippecanoe. This broke Indian resistance in the Ohio Valley and became a major barrier to Tecumseh’s efforts to organize a confederacy of Indian tribes.
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Tecumseh’s Confederacy
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after 1806—Tecumseh, a Shawnee Indian leader, never succeeded in his efforts to organize a confederacy of all the tribes as a way of preventing the continuation of American westward settlement. Tippecanoe broke up his confederacy and his fighting with the British during the War of 1812 failed to revive the idea of such a confederacy. Tecumseh’s death in 1813, during the War of 1812, meant the end of all efforts to organize an Indian confederacy.
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War Hawks
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1808—A significant number of new members of Congress were elected in 1808. Most of these were Democratic-Republicans who were anti-British in their outlook toward foreign policy. They did not see that “peaceable coercion” might work and agitated instead for war with Britain. Although the War Hawks recognized that France violated American neutrality, they pointed out that war with both France and Britain was probably not wise and that Britain was more guilty than the French in that only the British impressed seamen and only the British were engaged in inciting Indian uprisings in the Ohio Valley.
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Annexation of West Florida
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1810—The area that comprises the coastal regions of modern Alabama and Mississippi, plus the area of southeastern Louisiana composed of the “Florida parishes” was once known as West Florida (East Florida is what we know today as the state of Florida). West Florida revolted from Spanish rule and became the Republic of West Florida for a brief time before the area was annexed by the United States. With this annexation, the United States (as it now exists) east of the Mississippi River came together except for the 1819 addition of East Florida.
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Creek War
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1813-14—This was a war within a war (an Indian war in the South during the War of 1812). The Creeks were the Indians who lived mostly in what is today the state of Alabama (but was then part of the larger Mississippi Territory until Miss. Became a state in 1817, followed by Alabama in 1819). Their hostility towards white settlement in the Miss. Territory resulted in military forces under the command of Andrew Jackson being sent to defeat the Creeks. Jackson defeated the Creeks in 1813 at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. Many Creeks then escaped across the border into Spanish East Florida, where they joined their relatives, the Seminoles.
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Hartford Convention
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1814—This meeting of Federalist Party delegates, mostly from New England, expressed opposition to the War of 1812. Although no one officially espoused the idea of secession at the Hartford Convention, some of the delegates did discuss the idea that Federalist-dominated states from New England might be better off if they seceded from the Union. When the War of 1812 turned out well for the U.S., Federalists who had opposed the war seemed unpatriotic to many voters. Federalists found it hard to get elected and the party died out soon after the elections of 1816.
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Battle of New Orleans
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Jan. 1815—This biggest battle of the War of 1812 took place 3 weeks after the peace treaty ending the war had been agreed to in Ghent, Belgium. Word of the treaty did not reach the states in time to prevent this battle from taking place. It was a lop-sided American victory that made a national hero of Andrew Jackson and made it seem to Americans that the U.S. had won the war. The British forces of General Edwin Pakenham (7500 strong before the battle) suffered about 2000 casualties compared to only about 20 for the victorious Americans. Most Americans read about this victory in the newspapers before word arrived from Belgium that the war was over—making most Americans assume that the U.S. had won the war, when that was not really the case.
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Seminole Wars
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The First Seminole War occurred in 1814 when Creeks fleeing from Andrew Jackson joined forces with the Seminoles in northern Florida. Jackson chased the Creeks into Florida (even though this was an invasion of foreign territory). This fighting ended in late 1814 when Jackson was called away to assume command of the American defense of New Orleans against the British. However, by 1817, Jackson would be sent by the U.S. government to return to control raiding by the Creeks and Seminoles from across the border of Florida into Alabama. Again, he violated Spain’s territorial integrity and invaded northern Florida. This incident helped convince the Spanish they should cede Florida to the U.S. in 1819. Other Seminole Wars would be waged in the 1830s and 1840s. Each time, the Seminoles avoided outright defeat by escaping into the swamps of southern Florida. To this day, the Seminoles remain the only Indian tribe never to be completely subdued by the U.S. army.
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Treaty of Ghent
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Dec. 1814—This treaty ended the War of 1812. Britain did not agree to any American demands that Britain should respect American trading rights. However, the British pointed out to the Americans that they would not have any reason to violate American neutral trading rights now that Napoleon had been defeated in 1814. Without the necessity of maintaining an economic blockade of Europe, the British would no longer have any reason to stop American ships or to impress American sailors. Therefore, why should the fighting continue. By December of 1814 (after 3 months of negotiating) American and British diplomats came to the agreement that the fighting should stop. But neither side became the “winner” of the war as a consequence of this treaty. For Americans, however, the great victory won at New Orleans in Jan. 1815 made it seem as though the war had been “won.”
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Second Bank of the U.S.
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1816—Upon the outbreak of war in 1812, at a time when the U.S. had been lowering taxes and weakening the military for the past 10 years, money with which to wage war seemed desirable to the Madison Administration. However, there was little money with which to build a military and the first Bank of the United States (the 1st national bank) went out of existence in 1811 (when the Madison administration and a Democratic-Republican Congress allowed the bank’s charter to expire without renewal. Madison and members of Congress came to regret having done this during the war, since the bank would have been a convenient source of loans for the U.S. government at a time when money was needed and in short supply. After the war, Democratic-Republicans abandoned their opposition to the idea of a national bank and chartered the 2nd national bank (or Second Bank of the United States) in 1816 with a 20 year charter due to expire in 1836.
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Tariff of 1816
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This was another example of the Democratic-Republican Party adopting issues formerly connected with the Federalist Party. First, Jefferson adopted the loose construction idea in purchasing Louisiana from Napoleon. Then, the Democratic-Republicans regretted killing the national bank in 1811 and chartered a new national bank in 1816. They regretted eliminating taxes after 1801 that had led to a smaller military (when the lack of a military became a problem during the War of 1812). Consequently, a larger military would be maintained after 1815. Now, because the War of 1812 had stimulated the development of factories in New England, a tariff to protect them from foreign competition was passed by Congress in 1816. Even though a protective tariff represents the kind of governmental regulation associated with the Federalist Party, it was a Democratic-Republican majority in Congress that enacted the tariff. In 1816, there was political consensus in favor of protecting American manufacturers from foreign competition, but the tariff would increasingly be opposed by southerners over the next decade until the tariff had become a sectional issue of importance. In 1816, the idea existed that northern textile mills would be supplied by southern cotton and North and South could be made economically dependent on each other. So southerners supported the tariff that would protect northern mills from British competition. By 1828, however, it would become apparent to southerners that the growth of textile mills in the North could not keep pace with the growth of cotton production in the South. By 1828, most southerners realize that most southern cotton will have to be sold to the British anyway, because the few American mills (protected by tariffs) could utilize only a small fraction of the southern output of cotton. Now, southerners begin to wish that they could buy manufactured products from the British at the cheaper price that would apply if the tariff could be gotten rid of. Southerners begin to see tariffs as a process in which money is taken from their pockets in order to line the pockets of northern manufacturers and they become opposed to tariffs.
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The Cotton Gin
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1793—Invented by Eli Whitney, this device made the cultivation of short staple cotton feasible throughout the South. Unlike the long-staple variety of cotton, which had few seeds but could be grown only on the Sea Islands of South Carolina, the short-staple variety could be grown anywhere in the South yet had too many seeds that had to be removed from the cotton fiber in order to make growing it worthwhile—until the cotton gin made removing the seeds easy and cost-effective. This led to the widespread cultivation of short-staple cotton across the South. Because cotton prices were good (due to the demand for cotton by the British textile industry), cotton production soared once the cotton gin made the crop economically viable. More than anything else, this development would cause southerners to become even more dependent than formerly on slavery as the basis of the southern labor supply.
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Era of Good Feelings
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after the War of 1812 until the dispute over Missouri’s statehood, beginning in 1818—This term refers to the fact that, as the Federalist Party died out and as the Democratic-Republican Party adopted all of the Federalist Party’s issues, there were no serious political disputes or confrontations in the United States for a short while, until North-South tension over slavery began to develop as a result of Missouri’s application for statehood.
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Adams-Onis Treaty (otherwise known as the Transcontinental Treaty
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1819—This treaty between the U.S. and Spain ceded East Florida to the United States (for $5 million), established the Sabine River as the dividing line between Louisiana and Spanish Texas, and settled the boundary between Spanish California and Oregon as the line that serves as that boundary today. Oregon was not yet American property, though the U.S. claimed it (it was also claimed by the British until the British agreed to let the U.S. have Oregon in a convention of 1846). But in this case, at least Spain recognized American territory as extending all the way to the Pacific Ocean. The main term of this treaty, however, was the American acquisition of Florida, as a result of the threat that if Spain did not cede Florida, Americans would militarily seize it. Due to Andrew Jackson’s invasions of Spanish Florida during the Creek War and during the 2nd Seminole War, this was not an idle threat.
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Tallmadge Amendment
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1818—Introduced by James Tallmadge of New York, this was an amendment to the bill that would have approved the statehood of Missouri, but on terms that would have provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in Missouri. Because of the Tallmadge Amendment, southerners refused to vote to admit Missouri as a state in 1818 and a compromise between North and South would become necessary in order to admit Missouri as a slave state in 1820.
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Missouri Compromise
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1820—This compromise, proposed by Henry Clay of Kentucky, temporarily settled the problem of what to do about slavery west of the Mississippi River. The issue came up at this time because Missouri became the first state west of the Mississippi to apply for statehood. Before this time, slavery was not an issue between North and South, since the Northwest Ordinance had made it clear that slavery would exist south of the Ohio River all the way westward to the Mississippi at the same time that it forbade slavery north of the Ohio River. When Missouri applied for statehood for the first time in 1818, it was the first territory west of the Mississippi to apply for statehood and the first territory to which the Northwest Ordinance’s ban on slavery did not apply. It was not at all clear whether or not slavery was to be allowed in Missouri and so this became an issue in Congress very quickly—one that divided North and South and brought the Era of Good Feelings to an end. The terms of the compromise was that the balance of free and slave states would be kept even in that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state at the same time as Maine was admitted as a free state. For the future, the area of the Louisiana Purchase would be divided at the line that formed the southern boundary of Missouri (the 36 degree, 30 minute line of latitude). With the exception of Missouri itself, slavery would be forbidden north of this line. This remained the agreement over slavery until the Mexican War brought new western territory under the control of the United States and re-opened the question of whether these territories would be slave or free (because the 36-30 line as the dividing line between slave and free applied only to the Louisiana Purchase and did not extend all the way to the Pacific).
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The Marshall Court
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1801-1835—John Marshall, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court did more to influence the development of public policy in the United States than did all five presidents under whom he served. The Marshall Court determined the role that the judicial branch would play in the national government by developing the power of judicial review. Through many of its decisions the Marshall Court would expand the power of the central government to direct economic expansion in the United States. This power of the federal government was one of the legacies of the Federalist Party, the party that John Marshall had belonged to when appointed to the Supreme Court by John Adams in 1801.
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Monroe Doctrine
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1823—If the Neutrality Proclamation was one cornerstone of American foreign policy during the 19th century, the Monroe Doctrine became the other cornerstone. This unilateral statement by the United States warned Europeans to leave alone the host of new independent republics that appeared in Mexico and in Central and South America as a result of the disintegration of Spain’s New World empire between 1807 and 1824. The doctrine, mostly the idea of John Quincy Adams (who served as Secretary of State for James Monroe), stated basically that if Europeans left the western hemisphere alone, Americans would leave Europe alone. If they didn’t, it would mean trouble with the United States. Although the U.S. was far too militarily weak in the 19th century to enforce the doctrine, the British became willing to enforce it for the U.S. in exchange for American willingness to share the trade of Latin America with the British. The Monroe Doctrine was farsighted, however, in that it envisioned a time when the U.S. would become a world power and would become the economic and military leader of the western hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine called the U.S. to fulfill this role long before the country was able to do so, yet it gave the country a mission and a direction in which to grow.
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Election of 1824
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This is the second election in American history in which the House of Representatives had to decide the winner. In this case, the House had to decide between Andrew Jackson, who had the most votes of the four main candidates (but no majority) and John Quincy Adams, who came in second in the popular vote count. Henry Clay, another of the candidates in this election, was in a powerful position, as Speaker of the House, to help decide between Adams and Jackson. Andrew Jackson’s followers would claim that a dirty deal between Clay and Adams resulted in Adams’ election over their hero Andrew Jackson. Beginning with Madison’s succession to Jefferson, a pattern emerged in which whoever served as Secretary of State became the next president. So when John Quincy Adams appointed Henry Clay to become Secretary of State following the election in the House of Representatives, Jackson followers charged that Clay used his influence as Speaker of the House to get Adams elected over Jackson in exchange for the appointment as Secretary of State—which would set up Clay to become the next president after Adams.
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The American System
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1820s,30s—These are the ideas of Henry Clay that will eventually become the main ideas of the Whig Party, once that party is in place by 1834.
Clay was concerned about sectionalism destroying the nation’s unity. It had been Clay, after all, who wrote the Missouri Compromise in 1820. In order to keep the nation from dividing over economic issues, Clay wanted a political system that would encourage sections of the nation to become economically dependent on each other. In the case of the North, this section’s needs included tariffs to protect the fledgling industries created there since the beginning of the War of 1812. The South was expected to support the tariff because Clay wanted northern textile mills to become the market for southern cotton. This was one of the problems with the American System in that northern industry never grew fast enough to become the primary market for southern cotton—and most southerners would become opponents of the tariff. Another way that Clay wanted an American System to promote intersectional dependency was by having the federal government become responsible for promoting internal development projects (for the purpose of improving the country’s infrastructure and transportation facilities, so as to encourage the movement of goods and services from one section of the country to another). This would mean, however, federal taxation and an activist federal presence in the economy that would run counter to the laissez-faire doctrine of the Democratic-Republican Party and of the Democratic Party of Andrew Jackson that became the heir to Democratic-Republican party. In effect, the Whig Party became the heir to the Federalist Party in that the Whigs were the ones after 1834 interested in supporting a national bank and federal activism, while their opponents (the Jacksonian Democrats) opposed the national bank and argued against all federally-sponsored infrastructure projects, such as roads, canals, railroads, etc. The American System of Henry Clay became, in effect, the political platform of the Whig Party. |
