"Era of Good Feelings" essay rewrite

The label historians so commonly place on the time period of 1815-1825 the "Era of Good Feelings" is incorrect because of the overwhelming amount of sectionalism, either economical, political, racial or even disunion, among the everyday people in the different regions of the United States. Although there was a facade of nationalism put forth by the national minded elites and their decisions, the majority of the country still felt divided.

A refute to the claim of an "Era of Good Feelings" is economic sectionalism among the people. In one aspect there were growing divisions between commercial business and agriculture, such as in 1816 when John Randolph addressed congress (Doc A) with his concern about unequal taxation between the agricultural and manufacturing. He was referring to the Protective Tariff of 1816 that placed a tax on items from other countries. This tariff would protected growing businesses in the states by making goods from other countries, that were usually cheaper more expensive. This however put an even greater strain on farmers, making good so expensive they become almost unattainable. Nonetheless the tariff did get passed.  The government was thinking more long term, knowing that eventually we would have to set up our own manufacturing to become self-sufficient. But Randolph represents the majority of the population's opinions that feels the tariff is unfair and favors the companies rather than the farmers. Continuing with the theme of government’s progression to a more unified union is the decision of McCulloch vs. Maryland case (Doc D). During the same year as the panic of 1819, Maryland questioned the constitutionality of congress to establish a National Bank. Again, even though the court ruling confirms the "implied powers" of congress to set up a national bank it still is an example of sectionalism by the people and nationalism by the government. John Marshall, the head of the courts was a harden nationalist. He was a part of the old Federalist Party who believed in a strong national government with a centralized authority and a complex commercial economy. So predictable he ruled in the way of nationalism. But Maryland shows the feeling of the nation. After the panic of 1819 many people blamed the national bank for the six year depression. The land boom fueled by availability of easy credit from the government, under the lands acts of 1800 and 1804, from state banks soon came to a bust in 1819 when the national bank began tightening credit and foreclosing mortgages. This bust people associated with the National Banks influence in the Nation’s economy.

As well as economic sectionalism there was political sectionalism. The people were divided on whether there should be a strong central government or if states should maintain the majority of the power. This division was seen with the first party system the Federalist, favored a strong national government with central authority, vs. the National Republicans who believed with a small centralized government leaving most of the power in the hands of the states. The National Republicans rejected a lot of government power because they feared the same tyranny they experienced with Britain. Even when these parties ceased existed their ideas remained. With these opposing views on how the states should be run, the states individually turned to the presidential elections to vote for someone who shares their political viewpoints. This created sectionalism among the states. Instead of voting for the leader who was best for the whole nation they voted for leader who would benefit their own state. We see this in the comparison of presidential elections from 1820 to 1824 (Doc I). In the presidential election of 1820 almost unanimously all the states voted for Monroe, this was because in 1820 the Federalist Party ceased to existed and left Monroe to run unopposed. But after four years to regroup, new parties and ideas slowly began to emerge. In 1824 there were four candidates, but the two front runners were Jackson and Adams. All the candidates got support from their home state which is an example is sectionalism showing states favored people from their state that would support them and their ideas. But Jackson got the majority of electoral and popular votes followed closely by Adams then Clay. The house of represents under Twelfth Amendment had to choose between the three most popular candidates. Clay by then was seriously ill and was not a possible candidate, leaving Jackson vs. Adams, members of different parties, democrat and National Republican. With the help of Clay who had strong political influence in the House of Representatives Adams won despite Jackson being more popular in the originally election, this was called the "corrupt bargain". This is another example of sectionalism because of the two parties present as well as the House chose one party, the National Republicans, over the other.

During this time period slavery was still practiced, making race a substantial separating factor between people. There's the obvious division of white vs. black, slave owner vs. slave. The white people in this time period believed they were superior to African American which in the south was one of the moral foundations of slavery. But even though there was always an idea of imperialism over slaves, many small plantation owners developed close relationship with them as they worked together in close quarters. But when slave resistance becomes a factor it separates the two groups even more as the white slave owners became afraid of the possibilities if slave revolts. An example of this fear is in a letter from Anna Hayes of South Carolina to her cousin in North Carolina (Doc G). In the letter she is addressing the Denmark Vesey affair, the 1822 slave conspiracy in Charleston. She relates this to the Haitian Revolution that started in 1791 and ended in 1803 with it being an independent slave run state. During this time white slave owners feared that slave in America would try to copy the actions in Haiti. Then when news of the conspiracy spread the white Southerners uneasiness grew as revolts were becoming a reality in the states. Soon conspiracy turned into reality with the Turner rebellion of 1831 where a band of armed African Americans killed sixty white men, women and children. Although this was the only large insurrection in the nineteenth-century, Southern still feared slave conspiracy and further violence. The fear caused an even greater separation of the two groups.

Switching to the North South division, we can see how in this so called "Era of Good feelings" there were strong fears of disunion. We see how the North and South begin to develop very differently societies. The two many distinctions came from the city based societies vs. the plantation and free vs. slave labor. As the northern soil becomes less fertile some turn to manufacturing-which was the center of most cities, but the south continues to rely mainly on agricultural usually in forms of plantations. Also the north used free labor to fill the demand for factory works and their commercial farmer because the work was less gurgling; while the south turned to slave to work plantations because of the hard labor and conditions involved in cotton and tobacco picking. Slowly the north manufacturing business produced a strong middle class with many job opportunities, where many people were prosperous enough to live very comfortable lives. The south contradictory had a small class of elite, the large plantation owners, and the rest remained poor without many chances for improvement.  The different centers of society cause problems with transportation. After the war of 1812 it becomes clear that U.S transportation was inadequate. In 1817 John C. Calhoun (Doc B) address congress with his Internal Improvement bill, which would use the funds owed to the government by the National Bank to finance roads and canals. He fears that disunion will happen as the nation grows with the lack of transportation. Nevertheless his bill was vetoed by Madison because he didn't feel that congress had enough power to administrate such a bill. Because of this veto transportation fell to the hands of wealth elites. The north developed complex road systems and canals because it city based society. The wealth business elites connected the cities together to further manufacturing and the ability for the commercial farmers to sell goods to cities. However because the south was centered on plantation the "king cottons", the large plantation owners, couldn't decide between themselves who should control the roads and were the stops should be placed. Even if they simply linked large plantation to large plantation, like the north did with cities, the smaller plantation and poor members of society would be excluded. With more complex roads in the north is allowed for greater expansion of the population. In a density population map of 1820(Doc E) it shows that the north had the majority of the population. This is due to the increased employment opportunities as well in the north. This increased population gave the north more power in congress because they had more representatives in the House. This became an issue in 1819 when Missouri applied for admission to the union. Before this time states have always been entered in pairs one slave one free, Missouri would make it unbalanced. With the north advantage the south didn't want Missouri to be a free state like originally planned-even though parts already practiced slavery. However the application of Maine (previously a part of Missouri) into the union offered a solution. They entered Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free; this is known as the Missouri Compromise. Without this Compromise we would have spiraled into disunion showing just how deep the sectionalism is especially between the northern and southern states. Then in April 1820 Thomas Jefferson (Doc F) writes a fearful letter about possible disunion. This was written just after the Missouri Compromise and even though the tension between the two sections was resolved he still had a pessimistic tone about the future of the nation. Jefferson express that the Compromise just pacified the problem for a moment without addressing the root of the issue, slavery. With our foresight we out able to see he is correct, after years of smoothing over the small fractions that threatened disunion we finally erupt into a civil war.

Of course there will be examples of nationalism that will try to disprove my claim how this are few and don't encapsulate the population as a whole. For instance John Krimmel depiction of Fourth of July in 1819(Doc C) seems to refute my claim of economic sectionalism. His illustration shows a large group of joyous individuals, with what seems to be a picture of George Washington in one corner and some sort of nationalist flag flying in the other. But it hard to believe that everyone was that engrossed with nationalism during an economic depression cause by a national government institution, the National Bank. Also with the lack of information with this picture we do not if the artist himself is a nationalist or his political views. We also don't know the reason behind the creation of the image, whether it was something he actually observed or a painting someone paid him to depict. Also as I have been saying throughout that the nationalism was put forth by the elites. As demonstrated by the Dairy of John Quincy Adams in 1823(Doc H) a political elite and soon to be president. His dairy reflects that he feels the United States was strong enough as a country to stand up to Great Britain and refuse the Holy Alliance. But just three year before the nation almost faced complete disunion with the controversy over Missouri. If it wasn't for the Missouri Compromise the uneven free vs. slave states would have been a high tension situation that could easily erupt. So for Adams to infer that America was stable enough as a nation to face one of the strongest forces in the World at this time, when sectionalism was extremely prevalent, seems hard to comprehend.