PROFF STAN
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of continual alarm, and now I have time to write
only two or three lines to ask you to tell Papa that
we are alive, in good health, and I hope safe from danger . . .
—Rosalie E. Calvert—August 30, 1814
"Burning of the White House" by Leslie Saalburg.
WHAT VALUES were embodied in agrarian republicanism?
WHAT FACTORS led to conflict between the United States and Britain in North
America?
WHAT WERE the consequences of the War of 1812?
WHAT WERE the principle provisions of the Missouri Compromise?
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY 1790-1824
WITH WHAT powers did the United States share North America in the decades after independence?
WHAT WERE the most important strengths of the American
economy in the early 1800s?
208 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o - 1824
AMERICAN COMMUNITIES Expansion Touches Mandan Villages
on the Upper Missouri IN MID-OCTOBER 1804, NEWS ARRIVED AT THE MANDAN VILLAGES, prominently situated on bluffs overlooking the upper Missouri River, that an American military party led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was coming up the river. The principal chiefs, hoping for expanded trade and support against their enemies the Sioux, welcomed these first American visitors. As the expedi- tion's three boats and forty-three men approached the village, Clark wrote, "great numbers on both sides flocked down to the bank to view us." That evening, the Mandans welcomed the Americans with an enthusiastic dance and gifts of food.
Lewis and Clark had been sent by President Thomas Jefferson to survey the Louisiana Purchase and to find an overland route to the Pacific Ocean. They were also instructed to inform the Indians that they now owed loyalty—and trade— to the American government. Meeting with the village chiefs, the Americans offered the Mandans a military and economic alliance. His people would like nothing better, responded Chief Black Cat, for the Mandans had fallen on hard times over the past decade. [Some twenty years earlier], "the smallpox destroyed the greater part of the nation," the chief said. "All the nations before this malady [were] afraid of them, [but] after they were reduced, the Sioux and other Indians waged war, and killed a great many."
The Americans spent the winter with the Mandans, joining in their communal life and establishing firm and friendly rela- tions with them. Lewis and Clark spent many hours acquiring important geographic information from the Mandans. The informa- tion provided by the Mandans and other Indian peo- ples to the west was vital to the success of the expedition. Lewis and Clark's "voyage of discovery" depended largely on the will- ingness of Indian peoples to share their knowledge of the land with the Americans.
In need of interpreters who could help them communi- cate with other Indian communities on their way, the Ameri- cans hired several multilingual Frenchmen who lived with the Mandans. They also acquired the services of Sacajawea, the fifteen-year-old Lemhi wife of one of the Frenchmen, who became the only woman to join the westward journey.
When the party left the Mandan villages in March, Clark wrote, his men were "generally healthy, except venereal com- plaints which is very common amongst the natives and the men catch it from them." After an arduous journey across the Rock-
ies, the party reached the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Columbia River, where they spent the winter. Overdue and feared lost, they returned in triumph to St. Louis in September 1806. Before long the Americans had established Fort Clark at the Mandan villages, giving American traders a base for challeng- ing British dominance of the western fur trade. The permanent American presence brought increased contact, and with it much more disease. In 1837, a terrible smallpox epidemic carried away the vast majority of the Mandans, reducing the population to fewer than 150. Four Bears, a Mandan chief who had been a child at the time of the Lewis and Clark visit, spoke these last words to the remnants of his people:
"I have loved the whites," he declared. "I have lived with them ever since I was a boy." But in return for the kindness of the Mandans, the Americans had brought this plague. "I do not fear death, my friends," he said, "but to die with my face rotten, that even the wolves will shrink with horror at seeing me, and say to themselves, that is Four Bears, the friend of the whites. They have deceived me," he pronounced with his last breath. "Those that I always considered as brothers turned out to be my
worst enemies." In sending Lewis and Clark on their "voyage
of discovery" to claim the land and the loyalty of the Mandans and other western Indian communities, President Jefferson was moti- vated by his vision of an expanding Ameri- can republic of self-sufficient farmers.
During his and succeeding presidencies, expansion became a key element of national
policy and pride. Yet, as the experience of the Mandans showed, what Jefferson viewed as enlarge-
ment of "the empire for liberty" had a dark side—the destruc- tion, from disease and coerced displacement, of the communities created by America's first peoples.
In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the young American nation was preoccupied with defining its place on the North American continent and in the larger world of inde- pendent nations. At the same time that America found oppor- tunities in world trade and in territorial expansion, it encountered international opposition from Britain and resis- tance at home from hard-pressed Indian nations. This chapter describes the ways in which, through war and diplomacy, the United States defined and controlled the nation's expanded boundaries, a vital step in building a sense of national identity and community.
WITH WHAT powers did the
United States share North America in
the decades after independence?
myhisbiOylab Review Summary
IMAGE KEY for pages 206-207
a. Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), by
Rembrandt Peale, c. 1805. b. "Burning of the White House" by
Leslie Saalburg.
c. A map of the Erie Canal.
d. An antique wooden compass used by
Lewis and Clark.
e. The clipper ship Flying Cloud, which sailed in 1894 from New York to San Francisco in 89 days.
f. A symbol of the Philadelphia Society
for Promoting Agriculture.
g. An 1833 portrait of two Sauk Indians
by John Wesley Jarvis.
h. The Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812.
i. James Monroe and Robert R. Livingstone negotiations with Comte Talleyrand for
the Louisiana Purchase.
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1 790-182 4 CHAPTER 9
209
NORTH AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
FROM COAST TO COAST
1 n spite of the political turmoil of the 1790s, the young United States entered the new century full of national pride and energy. But the larger issue, Amer-ica's place in the world, was still uncertain, beginning with its situation on the North American continent (see Map 9.1).
THE NEW NATION
At first glance, the United States of America in 1800 was little different from the scattered colonies of the pre-Revolution era. Two-thirds of the young nation's people still lived in a long thin line of settlement within fifty miles of the Atlantic coast. Most people lived on farms or in small towns. Because they rarely trav- eled far from home, peoples' horizons were limited and local.
Although only 3 percent of the nation's population lived in cities, the Atlantic ports continued to dominate the nation economically and politically. In 1800, the nation's most important urban centers were all Atlantic seaports: Charleston (pop- ulation 20,000), Baltimore (26,000), Philadelphia (70,000), New York (60,000), and Boston (25,000).
Nevertheless, the new nation was already transforming itself: between 1790 and 1800, according to the first and second federal censuses, the American pop- ulation grew from 3.9 million to 5.3 million. Growth by migration was greatest in the trans-Appalachian West, a region that was already home to approximately 100,000 Indians. To the immediate north was the continuing presence of the British in what is now Canada and the growing Russian presence in Alaska. To the west and south loomed the Spanish empire, while closer still was the nearby racial
powder keg in the Caribbean.
NORTHERN NEIGHBORS: BRITISH NORTH AMERICA AND RUSSIAN AMERICA
Although Britain had lost its war to keep the American colonies, it kept a firm grasp on British North America, which had once been French Canada (see Chapter 6). Legislative assemblies were established in Upper and Lower Canada and in the Maritimes in 1791, but, learning from their American fiasco, Britain kept the legislatures under strong executive control. British North America dominated the continental fur trade and the great succession of waterways—the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and the rivers beyond—that made it possible. Britain was on friendly terms with many of the native peoples who were part of the trade. This economic grip was a challenge and frustration to many westward-moving Ameri- cans. At the same time, the dispersed nature of the Canadian colonies made them, at least in the eyes of some Americans, ripe for conquest.
Russian settlement of what is now Alaska posed another more remote threat to the United States. Alaska was an extension of the Russian conquest of Siberia,
which was driven by the fur trade. The Russians sometimes took furs by force, holding whole villages hostage
and brutalizing the native Inuit and Aleut peoples. After the Aleut Revolt of 1766, the Russian authorities promised to end the abuse, but by 1800, the precontact pop- ulation of 25,000 Aleuts had been greatly reduced. At the same time, sexual rela- tions and intermarriage between fur trappers and Aleut women created a large group of Russian creoles who assumed an increasingly prominent position in the
Alaskan fur trade as navigators, explorers, clerks, and traders.
OREGON
COUNTRY
Fort Ross (Russian 1812) •
ALTA
CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles • Santa Fe
(1781) (1609)
• Tucson (1776)
CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o- 1824
RUSSIAN
AMERICA
210
Sitka • (1802)
RUPERT'S LAND Hudson
Bay
J S H NOR TH
ANIERIC
LOWER CANADA
'T C4 A 40.4
NORTHWEST *Bo ston TERRITORY Pi •New York
' *Philadelphia Baltimore
St. (Li omu3is) • (1778)•
r - KENTUCKY
Nashville (1792)
TIM. (i 77 9) • . )
Nacogdoches • (1791)
New Orleans • (1716)
SPANISH
LOUISIANA (1.t Louisville
na
SOUTHWE Charleston
TERRITO
San Antonio • de Bejar
(1718)
SPANISH FLORIDA
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
• Halifax
VERMONT (1791)
Gulf of Mexico
NEW
SPAIN
Saint- Domingue / Haiti
(French) Puerto Rico
I / (Spanish)
PACIFIC
OCEAN
Cuba (Spanish)
West Indies (British)
Mexico City.
Jamaica (British)
Barbados-- Caribbean Sea (British)
MAP 9.1 North America in 1800 In 1800, the new United States of America shared the North American continent with terri- tories held by the European powers: British Canada, French Louisiana (secretly ceded that year to France by Spain),
Spanish Florida, Spanish Mexico, and Russian Alaska, expanding southward along the Pacific Coast. Few people
could have imagined that by 1850, the United States would span the continent. But the American settlers who had
crossed the Appalachians to the Ohio River Valley were already convinced that opportunity lay in the West.
WHAT MOTIVATED American settlers to move to the West?
The Russian-American Company, chartered by the tsar in 1799, first set up American headquarters at Kodiak. When overhunting caused a scarcity of furs, the Russians moved their headquarters south to Sitka, in what is now the southeastern panhandle of Alaska, only to have their first fortress destroyed in the Tlingit Revolt of 1802. The Russians reestablished Sitka by force in 1804, and over the next gener- ation, established Russian settlements along the Pacific Coast as far south as Fort Ross, which was just north of San Francisco Bay.
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 211
This view shows Sitka, the center of Russian activities in Alaska, in 1827. Russian architectural styles and building techniques are apparent in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel in the right background, contrasting with the Asian and Indian origins of most of Sitka's inhabitants.
THE SPANISH EMPIRE
On paper, Spain posed the greatest threat to the United States because it pos- sessed most of North and South America. Mexico City, with a population of 200,000, was by far the largest and most elegant city on the continent. But Spanish control crumbled rapidly in the 1790s. Tensions mounted between the Spanish-born peninsulares, high officials and bureaucrats, and the native-born criollos of Spanish descent, who chafed at their subordination, especially after the success of the American Revolution. Furthermore, none of New Spain's north- ern provinces, created to protect the approaches to Mexico's fabulously wealthy silver mines, thrived.
In 1769, in their last effort to protect their rich colony of Mexico, the Span- ish established a chain of twenty-one missions in Alta California that stretched north from San Diego (1769) to Sonoma (1823). Despite Spain's desire to seal its territory from commerce with other nations, a brisk but illegal trade in otter skins, hides, and tallow developed between the United States and California.
American traders were making inroads on Spanish-held territory along the Mississippi River as well. New Orleans, acquired by Spain from France at the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, was becoming a thriving international port. Every year, a greater proportion of products for the New Orleans trade was supplied by Americans living some distance up the Mississippi River. Pinckney's 1795 treaty with Spain guaranteed Americans free navigation of the Mississippi River and the right to deposit goods at the port of New Orleans. Nevertheless, Americans were uncomfortably aware that the city's crucial location at the mouth of the Mis- sissippi meant that whatever foreign nation possessed New Orleans had the power to choke off the flourishing trade in the vast Mississippi Valley river system.
More than 600 miles north was the small trading town of St. Louis, founded by the New Orleans trader Pierre Laclede in 1763. By 1800, the town had fewer than a thousand residents, three-quarters of whom were involved in the Indian trade of the Missouri River. Spanish officials tried to supervise that trade from their offices in the town, but real control rested in the hands of the Lacledes and other French traders.
QUICK REVIEW
European Colonies in the Early Nineteenth Century
• Spain: challenged in its efforts to control New Spain and the Caribbean.
• Britain: government of Canada reflected lessons learned in the colonies.
• Russia: rapidly expanding pres- ence centered on Alaska and the Northwest.
212 3 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790- 1824 HAITI AND THE CARIBBEAN
The Caribbean posed other challenges. The rich sugar-producing islands, vari- ously colonies of Spain, France, and Britain provided 80 to 90 percent of the Euro- pean supply of sugar. All the sugar plantations used enslaved Africans as the labor force. Thus, they shared with the slaveholding American South a distinctive Afro—North American society that cut across national boundaries. This world was jolted in 1791 by the revolt of black slaves in Saint-Domingue, France's richest colony. Under the leadership of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the former colony, renamed Haiti, became North America's first independent black nation. Its exis- tence struck fear into the hearts of white slaveowners at the same time that it served as a beacon of hope to the enslaved.
TRANS-APPALACHIA
Within the United States itself, the region of greatest growth was territory west of the Appalachian Mountains, and it was this area that was most affected by fears of continuing British influence on Indian peoples. By 1800, about 500,000 people (the vast majority from Virginia and North Carolina) had found rich and fertile land along the Ohio River system. Soon there was enough population for statehood. Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) were the first trans- Appalachian states admitted to the Union.
Migration to the west was generally a family affair, with groups of kin mov- ing together to a new area. One observer wrote of a caravan moving across the mountains: "They had prepared baskets made of fine hickory withe or splints, and fastening two of them together with ropes they put a child in each basket and put it across a pack saddle." Once pioneers had managed to struggle by road over the Appalachians, they gladly took to the rivers, especially the Ohio, to move farther west.
Cincinnati, strategically situated 450 miles downstream from Pittsburgh, was a particularly dramatic example of the rapid community growth and devel- opment that characterized the trans-Appalachian region. Founded in 1788, Cincinnati began life as a military fort, defending settlers in the fertile Miami River Valley of Ohio from resistance by Shawnee and Miami Indians. After the Battle of Fallen Timbers broke Indian resistance in 1794, Cincinnati became the point of departure for immigrants arriving by the Ohio River on their way to settle the interior of the Old Northwest: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
Cincinnati merchants were soon shipping farm goods from the fertile Miami Valley down the Ohio—Mississippi River system to New Orleans, 1,500 miles away. River traffic increased yearly, and control of New Orleans became a key concern of western farmers and merchants. If New Orleans refused to accept American goods, Cincinnati merchants and many thousands of trans-Appalachian farmers
would be ruined.
A NATIONAL ECONOMY
C oncern about New Orleans illustrates the new nation's weak position in international trade. In 1800, the United States was a producer of raw materials. It faced the same challenge that developing nations confront
today. At the mercy of fluctuating world commodity prices they cannot control, such countries have great difficulty protecting themselves from economic dominance
by stronger, more established nations.
WHAT WERE the most important
strengths of the American economy
in the early 1800s?
myhisteiNlab Review Summary
The cotton gin, invented in 1793, was a simple device with huge consequences. It transformed the South, condemned millions of African Americans to slavery, and was the single largest source of American economic growth before 1860.
El Total Exports ❑ Reexports
120
60
0
g 40
80 0
100
20
0
1790
1795
1800 1805
1810
1815
Year
Figure 9.1 American Export Trade, 1790-1815 This graph shows how completely the American shipping boom was tied to European events. Exports, half of which were reexports, surged when Britain and France were at war
and America could take advantage of its neutral status.
Exports slumped in the brief period of European peace from
1803 to 1805 and plunged following the Embargo Act of
1807 and the outbreak of the War of 1812.
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 213
COTTON AND THE ECONOMY OF THE YOUNG REPUBLIC
In 1800, the United States was predominantly rural and agricul- tural. Farming families followed centuries-old traditions of work- ing with hand tools and draft animals, producing most of their own food and fiber. Crops were grown for subsistence (home use) rather than for sale. Commodities such as whiskey and hogs (both easy to transport) provided small and irregular cash incomes or items for barter.
The situation was very different in the South, where plantation agriculture based on enslaved workers was wholly commercial and international. Cotton, and the slave labor system that produced it, assumed a commanding place in southern life and in the foreign trade of the United States. The essential contribution of cotton to the nation's economy was the most important social and political reality of the early nineteenth century.
In 1790, however, increasing foreign demand for American goods and services hardly seemed likely. Trade with Britain, still the biggest customer for American raw materials, was considerably less than it had been before the Revolution. Britain and France both excluded Amer- icans from their lucrative West Indian trade and taxed American ships with discriminatory duties. It was difficult to be independent in a world dominated by great powers.
SHIPPING AND THE ECONOMIC BOOM
Despite these restrictions on American commerce, the strong shipping trade begun during the colonial era and centered in the Atlantic ports became a major asset in the 1790s, when events in Europe pro- vided America with extraordinary opportunities. The French Revolu- tion, which began in 1789, initiated nearly twenty-five years of warfare between Britain and France. All along the Atlantic seaboard, urban centers thrived as American ships carried European goods that could no longer be transported on British ships without danger of French attack (and vice versa). Because America was neutral, its merchants had the legal right to import European goods and promptly reexport them to other European countries. In spite of British and French efforts to prevent the practice (see Chapter 8), reexports amounted
to half of the profits in the booming shipping trade (see Figure 9.1). The long series of European wars also allowed enterprising Ameri- cans to seize such lucrative international opportunities, such as the
China trade. The active American participation in international trade fostered
a strong and diversified shipbuilding industry. All the major Atlantic ports boasted expanding shipbuilding enterprises. Demands for speed increased as well, resulting in what many people have regarded as the flower of American shipbuilding, the clipper ship. The narrow-hulled, many-sailed clipper ships of the 1840s and 1850s set records for ships
of their size. In 1854, Flying Cloud, built in the Boston shipyards of
Donald McKay, sailed from New York to San Francisco—a 16,000-mile
trip that usually took 150 to 200 days—in a mere 89 days.
QUICK REVIEW
Growth of American Trade:
1793-1807
• French Revolution initiated renewed period of warfare between France and Britain.
American merchants wanted to
supply both sides.
♦ Expansion of trade led to devel- opment of shipbuilding industry and growth of coastal cities.
214
CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
THE JEFFERSON PRESIDENCY
A t noon on March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson walked from his modest boardinghouse through the swampy streets of the new federal city of Washington to the unfinished Capitol. George Washington and John Adams had ridden in elaborate carriages to their inaugurals. Jefferson, although accepting a military honor guard, demonstrated by his actions that he rejected the elaborate, quasi-monarchical style of the two Federalist presidents and (to his mind) their autocratic style of government as well.
For all its lack of pretension, Jefferson's inauguration as the third president of the United States was a momentous occasion in American history, for it marked the peaceful transition from one political party, the Federalists, to their hated rivals, the Jeffersonian Republicans. Beginning in an atmosphere of exceptional political bitterness, Jefferson's presidency was to demonstrate that a strongly led party sys- tem could shape national policy without leading either to dictatorship or to revolt. Jefferson's own moderation may have been the crucial factor. Setting a tone of conciliation in his inaugural address, he announced, "We are all republicans; we are all federalists" and during his eight years in office he paid close attention to ways to attract moderate Federalists to the Jeffersonian Republican party.
.10111=211=2E. WHAT VALUES were embodied in
agrarian republicanism?
myhistdrylab Review Summary
8-2 Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801)
8-7 Fisher Ames, The Republican. No. II (1804)
REPUBLICAN AGRARIANISM
Behind all the events of Jefferson's administration (1801-1809) was a clear set of beliefs that embodied his interpretation of the meaning of republicanism for Americans. Jefferson's years as ambassador to France in the 1780s were particu- larly important in shaping his political thinking. Recoiling from the extremes of
wealth and poverty he saw there, he came to believe that it was impossible for Europe to achieve a just society that could guarantee to most of its members the "life, liberty and . . . pursuit of happiness" of which he had written in the Decla- ration of Independence. Only America, he believed, provided fertile earth for the true citizenship necessary to a republican form of government. What America
had, and Europe lacked, was room to grow. Jefferson envisaged a nation of small family farms clustered together in rural
communities—an agrarian republic. He believed that only a nation of roughly equal yeoman farmers, each secure in his own possessions and not dependent on someone else for his livelihood, would exhibit the concern for the community good that was essential in a republic. Indeed, Jefferson said that "those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God," and so he viewed himself, though his
"farm" was the large slave-owning plantation of Monticello. Jefferson's vision of an expanding agrarian republic remains to this day
one of our most compelling ideas about America's uniqueness and special des- tiny. But expansionism contained some negative aspects. The lure of the west- ern lands fostered constant mobility and dissatisfaction rather than the stable,
settled communities Jefferson envisaged. Expansionism caused environmental damage, in particular soil exhaustion—a consequence of abandoning old lands, rather than conserving them, and moving on to new ones. Expansionism encouraged the spread of plantations based on slave labor in the South (see Chapter 10). Finally, it bred a ruthlessness toward Indian peoples, who were pushed out of the way for white settlement or who, like the Mandans, were devastated by the diseases that accompanied European trade and contact. Jef- ferson's agrarianism thus bred some of the best and some of the worst traits of
the developing nation.
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 I 215
Tall, ungainly, and diffident in manner, Thomas Jefferson was nonetheless a man of genius: an
architect, naturalist, philosopher, and politician. His political philosophy, republican agrarianism, is illustrated by this symbol of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, in which the
farmer exemplifies Jefferson's hopes for America. As he said, "those who labor in the earth are the
chosen people of God."
JEFFERSON'S GOVERNMENT
Thomas Jefferson came to office determined to reverse the Federalist policies of the 1790s and to ensure an agrarian "republic of virtue." Accordingly, he pro- posed a program of "simplicity and frugality," promising to cut all internal taxes, to reduce the size of the army, the navy, and the government staff, and to elimi- nate the entire national debt inherited from the Federalists. He kept all of these promises, even the last, although the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 cost the Trea- sury $15 million. This diminishment of government was a key matter of republi- can principle to Jefferson. If his ideal yeoman farmer was to be a truly self-governing citizen, the federal government must not, Jefferson believed, be
either large or powerful. Perhaps one reason for Jefferson's success was that the federal government
he headed was small and unimportant by today's standards. The national govern- ment's main service to ordinary people was mail delivery, and already in 1800 there were persistent complaints about the slowness, unreliability, and expense of the Postal Service! Everything else—law and order, education, wel- fare, road maintenance, economic control—rested with state or local govern- ments. Power and political loyalty were still local, not national.
AN INDEPENDENT JUDICIARY
Although determined to reverse Federalist fiscal policies, Jefferson was much more moderate concerning Federalist officeholders. He resisted demands by other Jeffersonian Republicans that "the board should be swept" and all
• 8-3 Margaret Bayard Smith, On Thomas Jefferson and the Peaceful Transfer of Power from the Federalists to the Jeffersonian Republicans (1801)
216 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
myhistoiylab Exploring America: Continentalism
Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court decision of 1803 that created the precedent ofjudicial review by ruling as unconstitutional part of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
Federalist officeholders replaced with party loyalists. During his term of office,
Jefferson allowed 132 Federalists to remain at their posts, while placing Jefferson-
ian Republicans in 158 other posts. Jefferson's restraint, however, did not extend
to the most notorious Federalist appointees, the so-called midnight judges.
In the last days of the Adams administration, the Federalist-dominated Con-
gress passed several acts that created new judgeships and other positions within the
federal judiciary. Jeffersonian Republicans feared that the losing Federalist Party
was trying to politicize the judiciary by appointing Federalists who would use their
positions to strengthen the powers of the federal government, a policy the Jefferso-
nians opposed. In one of his last acts in office, President Adams appointed Feder-
alists—quickly dubbed the "midnight judges"—to these new positions. William
Marbury, whom President Adams had appointed justice of the peace for Washing-
ton, DC, and three other appointees sued James Madison, Jefferson's secretary of
state, to receive their commissions for their offices. Before the case came to trial, how-
ever, Congress, controlled by Jeffersonian Republicans, repealed the acts. This case,
Marbury v. Madison, provoked a landmark decision from the U.S. Supreme Court. At issue was a fundamental constitutional point: Was the judiciary indepen-
dent of politics? In his celebrated 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Jus- tice John Marshall, himself a strong Federalist and an Adams appointee, managed
to find a way to please both parties. Marshall ruled that Marbury was entitled to
his commission but that the Supreme Court did not have the power to force the
executive branch to give it to him. At first glance, efferson's government appeared
to have won the battle. But in the long run, Marshall established the principle
that only the federal judiciary could "say what the law is," thus unequivocally
defending the independence of the judiciary and the principle ofjudicial review.
This was a vital step in realizing the three-way balance of power among the branches
of the federal government—executive (president), legislative (Congress), and judi-
ciary (courts)—envisaged in the Constitution. Equally important, during his long
tenure in office (1801-35), Chief Justice Marshall consistently led the Supreme
Court in a series of decisions that favored the federal government over state gov-
ernments (see Chapter 12) . Under Marshall's direction, the Supreme Court
became a powerful nationalizing force, often to the dismay of defenders of states'
rights, Jefferson's Republicans among them.
OPPORTUNITY: THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
In 1800, the United States was a new and fragile democracy in a world dominated
by two contending great powers: Britain and France. In 1799, the young general
Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of France and began a career of military con-
quests. Great Britain promptly went to war against him. If England and France
fought in North America, as they had in the Seven Years' War (see Chapter 6),
America's national security would be directly threatened. Jefferson, who had once
ardently supported the goals of the French Revolution, viewed Napoleon's ambi-
tions with increasing apprehension. He feared a resumption of the political ani-
mosity of the 1790s, when Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans had so bitterly
disagreed on policy toward France (see Chapter 8). As had his predecessors, Napoleon considered North America a potential bat-
tleground on which to fight the British. He looked first at the Caribbean, where
he planned to reconquer Haiti, the world's first independent black nation,
reenslave its people, and use the rich profits from sugar to finance his European
wars. As a first step, in 1800, France secretly reacquired the Louisiana Territory,
the vast western drainage of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, from Spain, which
had held the region since 1763.
QUICK REVIEW
Marbury v. Madison (1803)
• Case sparked by Jefferson's refusal to recognize Adams's "midnight judges."
• Justice Marshall ruled that the duty of the courts was "to say what the law is."
• Ruling made the Supreme Court a powerful nationalizing force.
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 siii)1 217
In 1801, when President Jefferson first learned of the French—Spanish secret agreement about Louisiana, he was concerned about the threat to American com- merce on the Mississippi River. In fact, in 1802, the Spanish commander at New Orleans (the French had not yet taken formal control) closed the port to Amer- ican shippers, thus disrupting commerce as far away as Cincinnati. As Jefferson feared, Federalists in Congress clamored for military action to reopen the port.
In the summer of 1802, Jefferson instructed Robert Livingston, the Ameri- can ambassador to France, to negotiate to buy New Orleans and the surrounding area for $2 million (or up to $10 million, if necessary). The initial bargaining was not promising, but suddenly, in early 1803, Napoleon was ready to sell. His effort to reconquer Haiti failed, defeated by yellow fever and by an army of former slaves led by Toussaint L'Ouverture. Expecting the British to declare war against him again, and in need of money for European military campaigns, Napoleon sud- denly offered the entire Louisiana Territory, including the crucial port of New Orleans, to the Americans for $15 million. In an age when it took at least two months for messages to cross the Atlantic, special American envoy James Monroe and Ambassador Livingston could not wait to consult Jefferson. They seized the opportunity: they bought the entire Louisiana Territory from Napoleon in Paris in April 1803. Overnight, the size of the United States more than doubled. It was the largest peaceful acquisition of territory in U.S. history.
At home, Jefferson suffered brief qualms. The Constitution did not autho- rize the president to purchase territory, and Jefferson had always rigidly insisted on a limited interpretation of executive rights. But he had also long held a sense of destiny about the West and had planned the Lewis and Clark expedition before the Louisiana Purchase was a reality. Jefferson now argued that Louisiana was vital to the nation's republican future. "By enlarging the empire of liberty," Jefferson wrote, "we . . . provide new sources of renovation, should its principles, at any time, degenerate, in those portions of our country which gave them birth." In other words, expansion was essential to liberty. But for African American slaves and Native Americans, the Louisiana Purchase simply increased the scope of their enslavement and destruction. By 1850, four of the six states in the Louisiana Pur- chase had entered the Union as slave states (see Chapter 10), and Indian Terri- tory, envisaged by Jefferson as a distant refuge for beleaguered eastern Indian peoples, was surrounded by new settlements (see Chapter 15). No matter how noble Jefferson's rhetoric, neither African Americans nor American Indians shared in his "empire of liberty" (see Map 9.2).
INCORPORATING LOUISIANA
In 1803, when the region that is now the state of Louisiana became American property, it had a racially and ethnically diverse population of 43,000 people, of whom only 6,000 were American. French and French-speaking people were numerically and culturally dominant, especially in the city of New Orleans. The city itself had a population of about 8,000, half white and half black. Two-thirds of the black population were slaves; the remainder were "free persons of color," who under French law enjoyed legal rights equal to those of white people. In New Orleans the French community effectively challenged the initial American plan of rapidly supplanting French culture and institutions with American ones. As a result, with Claiborne's full support, Louisiana adopted a legal code in 1808 that was based on French civil law rather than English common law. This was not a small concession. French law differed from English law in many fundamental respects, such as in family property (communal versus male ownership), in inheritance (forced heir- ship versus free disposal), and even in contracts, which were much more strictly
8-4 Thomas Jefferson, Constitutionality of the Louisiana Purchase (1803)
MAINE VERMONT (part of Mass.)
NEW HAMPSHIRE
NEW MASSACHUSETTS YORK
'''RHODE ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
PENNSYLVANIA NEW JERSEY
v;ka R. CHINOOK
Fort Clatsop (winter quarters • lissoffi R. Mandan Villages
1805-06) (winter quarters 1804-05)
CLAMP NEZ MANDAN • PERCE CROW
OREGON SHOSHONI
COUNTRY CHEYENNE SIOUX
Fort Ross m (Russian 1812)
PACIFIC
OCEAN SPANISH
TERRITORY Santa Fe
• Los Angeles
ARAPAHO PAWNEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE
(1803) OSAGE
APACHE
COMANCHE
VIRGINIA
NORTH CAROLINA
TENNESSEE
SOUTH CAROLINA
..:7" MISSISSIPPI
GEORGIA
TERRITORY
DELAWARE
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
INDIANA OHIO
TERRITORY
* St. Louis
KENTUCKY
218
CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790- 1824
it. MAP EXPLORATION To explore an interactive version of this map, go to http://www.prenhall.com/faraghertIc/map9.2
RUSSIAN AMERICA
Hit lson
R ay
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
BLACKFOOT
Natchez
St. Augustine •
SPANISH
FLORIDA
Nacogdoches.
San Antonio de Bejar.
New Orleans
Louisiana Purchase
Route of Lewis and Clark, 1804-06
Gulf of Mexico
MAP 9.2 Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the largest peaceful acquisition of territory in U.S. history, more
than doubled the size of the nation. The Lewis and Clark expedition (1804-06) was the first to survey and document
the natural and human richness of the area. The American sense of expansiveness and continental destiny owes more
to the extraordinary opportunity provided by the Louisiana Purchase than to other factors.
HOW DID the terrain of the Lewis and Clark expedition influence the routes of the journey?
regulated in the French system. In 1812, with the required 60,000 free inhabitants, Louisiana was admitted to the Union. New Orleans remained for years a distinc- tively French city, illustrating the flexibility possible under a federal system.
TEXAS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE
Spain objected, in vain, to Napoleon's 1803 sale of Louisiana to America. For years, Spain had attempted to seal off its rich colony of Mexico from commerce with other nations. Now, American Louisiana shared a vague and disputed boundary with Mexico's northern province of Texas.
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o-1824 CHAPTER 9 --; 2 19
Soon Napoleon brought turmoil to all of Mexico. In 1808, having invaded Spain, he installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king, forcing Spain's king, Charles IV, to renounce his throne. For the next six years, as warfare convulsed Spain, the country's long-prized New World empire slipped away. Mex- ico, divided between royalists loyal to Spain and populists seeking social and eco- nomic justice for mestizos and Indians, edged toward independence. Two populist revolts were suppressed by the royalists.
In 1812, a small force, led by Mexican republican Bernardo Gutierrez but composed mostly of American adventurers, invaded Texas, captured San Anto- nio, assassinated the provincial governor Manuel Salcedo, and declared Texas
independent. A year later, however, the Mexican republicans were defeated by a royalist army, which then killed suspected collaborators and pillaged the province so thoroughly that the local economy was devastated. The Mexican population declined to fewer than 2,000. Under these circumstances, Mexico's difficult path toward independence seemed, at least to some Americans, to offer yet another opportunity for expansion.
RENEWED IMPERIAL RIVALRY
IN NORTH AMERICA
F resh from the triumph of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson scored a major victory over the Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in the presidential election of 1804. Jefferson's shrewd wooing of moderate Federalists had been so successful that the remaining Federalists dwindled to a highly principled but sectional group, unable to attract voters outside of its home base in New England. Jefferson's Louisiana success was not repeated, however, and few other consequences of the ongoing struggle between Britain and France were so easy
to solve.
PROBLEMS WITH NEUTRAL RIGHTS
In his first inaugural address in 1801, Jefferson had announced a foreign policy of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." This was a difficult policy to pursue after 1803, when the Napoleonic Wars resumed. By 1805, Napoleon had conquered most of Europe, but Britain, the victor at the great naval battle of Trafalgar, controlled the seas. The United States, trying to profit from trade with both countries, was caught in the middle. Beginning in 1805, the British targeted the American reexport trade between the Caribbean and France by seizing American ships that were bringing French West Indian goods to Europe. Angry Americans viewed these seizures as violations of their rights as shippers of a neutral nation.
An even more contentious issue arose from the substantial desertion rate of British sailors. Many deserters promptly signed up on American ships, where they drew better pay and sometimes obtained false naturalization papers as well. As many as a quarter of the 100,000 seamen on American ships were British. Soon the British were stopping American merchant ves- sels and removing any man they believed to be British, regardless of his papers. The British refusal to recognize genuine naturalization papers (on the principle "once a British subject, always a British subject") was particu- larly insulting to the new American sense of nationhood. At least 6,000 inno- cent American citizens suffered forced impressment into the British navy
from 1803 to 1812.
=11111111.1.11011= WHAT FACTORS led to conflict
between the United States and
Britain in North America?
myhist4ylab Review Summary
It220 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1 790-182 4 THE EMBARGO ACT
Fully aware that commerce was essential to the new nation, Jefferson was deter- mined to insist on America's right as a neutral nation to ship goods to Europe. He first tried diplomatic protests, then negotiations, and finally threats, all to no avail. In 1806, Congress passed the Non-Importation Act, hoping that a boycott of British goods, which had worked so well during the Revolutionary War, would be effec- tive once again. It was not. Finally, in desperation, Jefferson imposed the Embargo Act in December 1807. This act forbade American ships from sailing to any for- eign port, thereby cutting off all exports as well as imports. The intent of the act was to force both Britain and France to recognize neutral rights by depriving them of American-shipped raw materials.
But the results were a disaster for American trade. The commerce of the new nation, which Jefferson himself had done so much to promote, came to a standstill. Exports fell from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, and the nation was driven into a deep depression. There was widespread evasion of the embargo. Pointing out that the American navy's weakness was due largely to the deep cuts Jefferson had inflicted on it, the Federalists sprang to life with a campaign of outspoken opposition to Jefferson's policy.
MADISON AND THE FAILURE OF "PEACEABLE COERCION"
In this troubled atmosphere, Thomas Jefferson despondently ended his second term, acknowledging the failure of what he called "peaceable coercion." He was followed in office by his friend and colleague James Madison of Virginia. Although Madison defeated the Federalist candidate—again Charles Cotesworth Pinkney—Pinckney's share of the votes was three times what it had been in 1804.
Ironically, the Embargo Act had almost no effect on its intended victims. The French used the embargo as a pretext for seizing American ships, claiming they must be British ships in disguise. The British, in the absence of American competition, developed new markets for their goods in South America. In March 1809, Congress admitted failure, and the Embargo Act was repealed. But the struggle to remain neu- tral in the confrontation between the European giants continued.
A CONTRADICTORY INDIAN POLICY
The United States faced other conflicts besides those with Britain and France over neutral shipping rights. In the West, the powerful Indian nations of the Ohio Val- ley were determined to resist the wave of expansion that had carried thousands of white settlers onto their lands.
According to the Indian Intercourse Act of 1790, the United States could not simply seize Indian land; it could only acquire it when the Indians ceded it by treaty. But this policy conflicted with the harsh reality of westward expansion. Commonly, settlers pushed ahead of treaty boundaries. When Indian peoples resisted the invasion of their lands, the pioneers fought back and called for mili- tary protection. Defeat of an Indian people led to further land cessions. The result for the Indians was a relentless cycle of invasion, resistance, and defeat.
Thomas Jefferson was deeply concerned with the fate of the western Indian peoples. Convinced that Indians had to give up hunting in favor of the yeoman- farmer lifestyle he so favored for all Americans, Jefferson directed the governors of the Northwest Territories to "promote energetically" his vision for civilizing the Indians, which included Christianizing them and teaching them to read.
After the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson offered traditionalist Indian groups new lands west of the Mississippi River, where they could live undisturbed by white settlers. But he failed to consider the pace of westward expansion. Less than twenty
QUICK REVIEW
Embargo Act (1807)
• Forbade American ships from sail- ing to foreign ports.
• Intended to force Britain and France to recognize neutral rights.
• The Act was an economic disaster for the United States.
Embargo Act Act passed by Congress in 1807 prohibiting American ships from leaving for any foreign port.
SIAN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 221 years later, Missouri, the first trans-Mississippi state, was admitted to the Union. West- ern Indians like the Mandans, who had seemed so remote, were now threatened by further westward expansion.
In fact, Jefferson's Indian policy, because it did nothing to slow down the ever-accelerating westward expansion, offered little hope to Indian peoples. The alternatives they faced were stark: acculturation, removal, or extinction. Deprived of hunting lands, decimated by disease, increasingly dependent on the white economy for trade goods and annuity payments in exchange for land ces- sions, many Indian peoples despaired. Nearly every tribe found itself bitterly split between accommodationists and traditionalists. Some, like groups of Cherokees and associated tribes in the South, advocated adapting their traditional agricul- tural lifestyles and pursuing a pattern of peaceful accommodation. In the North- west Territory, however, many Indians chose the path of armed resistance.
INDIAN RESISTANCE
The Shawnees, a seminomadic hunting and farming tribe (the men hunted, the women farmed) of the Ohio Valley, had resisted white settlement in Kentucky and Ohio since the 1750s. Anthony Wayne's decisive defeat of the Indian confederacy led by Little Turtle at Fallen Timbers (1794) and the continuing pressure of American set- tlement, however, had left the Shawnees divided. One group, led by Black Hoof, accepted acculturation. The rest of the tribe tried to maintain traditional ways. Most broke into small bands and tried to eke out a living by hunting. One group of tradi- tional Shawnees, however, led by the warrior Tecumseh, sought refuge farther west.
(left) Tecumseh, a Shawnee military leader, and (right) his brother Tenskwatawa, a religious leader called The Prophet, led a pan-Indian revi- talization and resistance movement that posed a serious threat to American westward expansion. Tecumseh traveled widely, attempting to build a military alliance on his brother's spiritual message. He achieved considerable success in the Old Northwest but less in the Old Southwest, where many Indian peoples put their faith in accommodation. Tecumseh's death at the Battle of the Thames (1813) and British abandonment of their Shawnee allies at the end of the War of 1812 brought an end to organized Indian resistance in the Old Northwest. (right): 1830. Oil on canvas. 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 60.9 cm) Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, U.S.A.
Pan-Indian military resistance movement Movement calling for the political and cultural unification of Indian tribes in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
9-2 The Cherokee Treaty of 1817
222 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
But there was no escape from white encroachment. Between 1801 and 1809, William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, concluded fifteen treaties with the Delawares, Potawatomis, Miamis, and other tribes. These treaties opened eastern Michigan, southern Indiana, and most of Illinois to white settlement and forced the Indians onto ever-smaller reservations. Many of these treaties were obtained by coercion, bribery, and outright trickery, and most Indians did not accept them.
In 1805, Tecumseh's brother, Tenskwatawa, known as The Prophet, began preaching a message of Indian revitalization: a rejection of all contact with the Americans and a return to traditional practices of hunting and farming. He preached an end to quarreling, violence, and sexual promiscuity and to the accu- mulation of private property.
Tecumseh succeeded in molding his brother's religious following into a powerful pan-Indian military resistance movement. With each new treaty that Har- rison concluded, Tecumseh gained new followers among the Northwest Confed- eration tribes. Significantly, he also had the support of the British, who, after 1807, began sending food and guns to him from Canada, and who promised an alliance with the Indians if war broke out between Britain and America.
Tecumseh's pan-Indian strategy was at first primarily defensive, aimed at pre- venting further westward expansion. But after the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809, in which the United States gained 3 million acres of Delaware and Potawatomi land in Indiana, Tecumseh moved from passive to active resistance. He warned that any surveyors or settlers who ventured into the 3 million acres would risk their lives.
Tecumseh took his message of common land ownership and military resis- tance to all the Indian peoples of the Northwest Confederacy. He was not uni- formly successful, even among the Shawnees. Black Hoof, for example, refused to join. Tecumseh also recruited, with mixed success, among the tribes south of the Ohio River (see Map 9.3).
In November 1811, while Tecumseh was still recruiting among the south- ern tribes, Harrison marched to the pan-Indian village of Tippecanoe with 1,000 soldiers. The 600 to 700 Indian warriors at the town, urged on by Tenskwatawa, attacked Harrison's forces before dawn on November 7, hoping to surprise them. The attack failed, and in the battle that followed, the Americans inflicted about 150 Indian casualties, while sustaining about as many themselves. Although Har- rison claimed victory, the truth was far different. Dispersed from Tippecanoe, Tecumseh's angry followers fell on American settlements in Indiana and south- ern Michigan, killing many pioneers and forcing the rest to flee to fortified towns. Tecumseh himself entered into a formal alliance with the British. For western settlers, the Indian threat was greater than ever.
THE WAR OF 1812
M any Westerners blamed the British for Tecumseh's attacks on pio-neer settlements in the Northwest. British support of western Indi-ans and the long-standing difficulties over neutral shipping rights were the two grievances cited by President Madison when he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Britain on June 1, 1812. Congress obliged him on June 18. But the war had other, more general causes as well.
THE WAR HAWKS
A rising young generation of political leaders, first elected to Congress in 1810, strongly resented the continuing influence of Britain, the former mother country, on American affairs. Eager to assert independence from England once and for all, these
8-9 Chief Tecumseh, An "Uncommon Genius" Advocates Indian Unity (1809)
WHAT WERE the consequences of
the War of 1812?
myhistdciylab Review Summary
I/ Fort Oswegatchie NEW HAMPSHIRE
0"t' • Fort Oswego NEW YORK
MASSACHUSETTS
\RHODE ISLAND
CONNECTICUT
NEW JERSEY
PENNSYLVANIA
SAUKS AND FOXES
IOWAS
Fort Madison.
OSAGES
Okc, R .
SHAWNEES VIRGINIA
Mississippi Territory
Horseshoe Bend,* 1814
CREEKS
CHICKASA,',
GEORGIA
DELAWARE
MARYLAND
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
11!,AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 223
BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
MAINE (Mass.)
VERMONT
Sault Ste. Marie
t14.-------'.---? . ■ Fort Michillimackinac
.TTL
P
OTTAWAS ,.'
MiEh7gan -1111*SAUGAS Territory
WINNEBAG OS Hamar's Fort Detroit
Defeat, x ' \ 'S
1812 *, _siik, Fallen Timbers, 1790 WO e ullitt. WYA N Di dOTS
ippecanoe, 1877 .-- _,.., ....... J.... 7. DELAW,DES Prophetstown liNc........,1r-.5tslair's Defeat, 1791
Indiana Greenville 1
KICKAPOOS Territory J OHIO ILLINOIS
•St. Louis
Illinois Territory
Fort Dearborn,
QUAPAWS
KENTUCKY
TENNESSEE
CHEROKEES
NORTH CAROLINA
SOUTH CAROLINA
SPANISH
TERRITORY
CHOCTAWS
*Fort Mims, 1813
Gulf of Mexico
I Ceded before 1784 Ceded 1784-1809
Unceded Indian lands, 1809
-4— Spread of the Prophet's influence
-4- Tecumseh's travel routes
ilk Battle
■ British fort
■ American fort
SPANISH
FLORIDA
SEMINOLES
MAP 9.3 Indian Resistance, 1790-1816 American westward expansion put relentless pressure on the Indian nations in the trans-Appalachian South and West. The trans-Appalachian region was marked by constant warfare from the time of the earliest settlements in Kentucky in the 1780s to the War of 1812. Tecumseh's Alliance in the Old Northwest (1809-11) and the Creek Rebellion in the Old Southwest (1813-14) were the culminating struggles in Indian resistance to the American invasion of the trans-Appalachian region. Indian resistance was a major reason for
the War of 1812.
WHAT HAPPENED to the Indians of the Trans-Appalachian region after 1814?
224 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
04 8-10 Indian Hostilities (1812)
War Hawks Members of Congress, predominantly from the South and West, who aggressively pushed for a
war against Britain after their
election in 1810.
War of 1812 War fought between the United States and Britain from June 1812 to January 1815 largely
over British restrictions on American shipping.
young men saw themselves finishing the job begun by the aging revolutionary gen-
eration. They also wanted to occupy Florida to prevent runaway slaves from seeking
refuge with the Seminole Indians. Westerners wanted to invade Canada, hoping
thereby to end threats from British-backed Indians in the Northwest, such as Tecum-
seh and his followers. As resentments against England and frustrations over border
issues merged, the pressure for war—always a strong force for national unity— mounted.
Unaware that the British, seriously hurt by the American trade embargo,
were about to adopt a more conciliatory policy, President James Madison yielded
to the War Hawks' clamor for action in June 1812, and his declaration of war
passed the U.S. Senate by the close vote of 19 to 13, the House by 79 to 49. All
the Federalists voted against the war. (The division along party lines continued
in the 1812 presidential election, in which Madison garnered 128 electoral
votes to 89 for his Federalist opponent, DeWitt Clinton.) The vote was sectional,
with New England and the Middle States in opposition and the West and South
strongly prowar. Thus, the United States entered the War of 1812 more deeply
divided along sectional lines than during any other foreign war in American
history.
As a result of Jefferson's economizing, the American army and navy were
small and weak. In contrast, the British, fresh from almost ten years of Napoleonic
Wars, were in fighting trim. At sea, the British navy quickly established a strong
blockade, harassing coastal shipping along the Atlantic seaboard and attacking
coastal settlements at will. In the most humiliating attack, the British burned
Washington in the summer of 1814, forcing the president and Congress to flee (see
Map 9.4) .
THE CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE NORTHERN AND
SOUTHERN INDIANS
The American goal of expansion fared badly as well. Americans envisaged a quick
victory over sparsely populated British Canada that would destroy British support
for Tecumseh and his Northwest Indian allies, but instead the British–Indian alliance
defeated them (see Seeing History).
One reason for the abortive Canadian invasion, aside from failure to appreci-
ate the strength of the British–Indian forces, was that the New England states actively
opposed the war. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut refused to provide
militia or supplies, and other New England governors turned a blind eye to the flour-
ishing illegal trade across the U.S.–Canadian border. Another reason was the reac-
tion of Canadians themselves, the majority of whom were former Americans. Ironically,
the most decisive effect of the American attacks was the formation of a Canadian
sense of national identity and a determination never to be invaded or absorbed by
the United States. In the South, warfare similar to that waged against Tecumseh's pan-Indian
resistance movement in the Northwest dramatically affected the southern Indian
peoples. The first of the Indian peoples to battle the Americans were the Creeks,
a trading nation with a long history of contacts with the Spanish and French.
When white settlers began to occupy Indian lands in northwestern Georgia and
central Alabama early in the nineteenth century, the Creeks, like the Shawnees in
the Northwest, were divided in their response. Although many Creek bands argued
for accommodation, a group known as the Red Sticks were determined to fight.
During the War of 1812, the Red Sticks, allied with the British and Spanish, fought
not only the Americans but also other Indian groups.
QUICK REVIEW
Prelude to War
♦ Republican-controlled Congress balked at strengthening military.
♦ Divided Congress declared war.
♦ Support for war strongest in the South and West.
,„
ILLINOIS Is' ,yo)
MICHIGAN =
OW" NEW TERRITORY L. YORK
, -
Fort Dearborn .1- TERRITORY V V, RHODE ,
sy," ISLAND ve NA PENNSYLVANIA
NEW HAMPSHIRE
MASSACHUSETTS
Aug 15, 1812*
Fort McHenry (Baltimore)
CONNECTICUT
INDIANA OHIO Sept 13-14, 18141°1' NEW JERSEY
TERRITORY
Washington, D.C.' + DELAWARE surrendered and burned
Aug 24, 1814
MARYLAND silts
VIRGINIA
ck
4'4' 8,0,
Michillimackinac July 17, 1812
"Mk
Detroit surrendered Aug 16, 812 Eric la
• Fort Malden V • Erie
Fort Meigs Slk. Put-in-Bay Sept 10, 1813
Fort Defiance • Fort Tippecanoe Stephenson Nov 7, 1811
Oct 5, 1813
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
Lake
(CANADA)
MAINE
VERMONT
(MASS.)
KENTUCKY
NORTH CAROLINA TENNESSEE
SOUTH CAROLINA
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Horseshoe Bend - GEORGIA
Mar 27, 1814 LOUISIANA
Pensacola
New Orleans Nov 1814* Jan 8, 1815
SPANISH
G u lf of FLORIDA Mexico
MICHIGAN
TERRITORY •
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
(CANADA)
Montreal.
Plattsburgh Sept 11, 1814
Sacketts
York (Toronto) • Harbor Apr 27, 18134,
Lake 0006°
Queenston Heights Fort Ni agara „
Battle of the Thames
OHIO INDIANA
TERRITORY
'Dayton
Cincinnati
NEW YORK
PENNSYLVANIA
ilk American victories
ilk. American victories over Indians
ilk British victories ■ Forts
-4— American troop movements
-4— British troop movements
British naval blockade
MAP 9.4
The War of 1812 On land, the War of 1812 was fought to define the nation's boundaries. In the North, where military action was most intense,
American armies attacked British forts in the Great Lakes region with little success, and several invasions of Canada failed. In the South, the Battle of New Orleans made a national hero of Andrew Jackson, but it occurred after the peace treaty had been signed. On the sea, with the exception of Oliver Perry's victory in the Great Lakes, Britain's dominance was so complete and its blockade so effective that British troops were able to invade the
Chesapeake and burn the capital of the United States.
WHAT EVENTS and ambitions led to the outbreak of war in 1812?
225
CObellObia'S el./ knerl pofi. 1:7C tOr:r fereethsadneafrprrerh,fil. 74, urge ladthanag, his
kfeVe
4 onp r.14.- m iar.roor.
loarert• aril:Merl/ th ,ht4i1/1 liwyk
.741■14&rititleatkrniiYstilthr :4''/vttri.
And firAost wrings shall raltbaiew nvdr ,
"A Scene on the Frontiers as Practiced by the 'Humane' British
and their 'Worthy' Allies"
T his American cartoon, published during the War of 1812, shows a British officer paying for a scalp from an Indian, while another man is shown in the act of scalping a dead
American soldier. The cartoon may have been prompted by an actual event: the offer
of bounties for scalps made by British Colonel Proctor at Fort Dearborn (Chicago) in August
1815. In any case, the cartoon evoked horror at Indian barbarity and indignation at the
British for using them as pawns in the war. Similar charges had been made against the British
and their Indian allies during the American Revolution.
In reality, Indian resistance in the War of 1812 was different from the earlier war. The
western Indians were not British pawns.
The Shawnee leader Tecumseh and other
western Indian groups allied with him claimed
that they had been deprived of their lands by
fraudulent treaties and stripped of the ability
to maintain their traditional culture. Tecum-
seh began organizing resistance long before
d States and Britain. He did accept arms from the
British in Canada, and once the war broke out he formally allied with them and became
an officer in their army. By allying
with the British, the Indians hoped
to retain their homelands, but at
the peace negotiations the British
failed to insist on a buffer state for
neutral Indians as they had
promised. ■
THIS CARTOON inflamed popular fears of Indians that existed long before the War of
1812. Does it contribute anything to our
historical understanding of the reasons for
western Indian resistance?
the outbreak of war between the Unite
226
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o-1824 CHAPTER 9 22 7
In August 1813, the Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims on the Alabama River, killing more than 500 Americans and mixed-race Creeks who had gathered there for safety. Led by Andrew Jackson, troops from the Tennessee and Kentucky militias combined with the Creeks' traditional foes—the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—to exact revenge. Jackson's troops matched the Creeks in ferocity, shooting the Red
Sticks "like dogs," one soldier reported. At the end of the Creek War in 1814, Jackson demanded huge land conces-
sions from the Creeks (including concessions from some Creek bands that had fought on his side): 23 million acres, or more than half the Creek domain. The Treaty of Fort Jackson (1814) confirming these land concessions earned Jackson his Indian name, Sharp Knife. In early 1815 (after the peace treaty had been signed but before news of it arrived in America), Andrew Jackson achieved his best-known vic- tory, an improbable win over veteran British troops in the Battle of New Orleans.
THE HARTFORD CONVENTION
America's occasional successes failed to diminish the angry opposition of New England Federalists to the War of 1812. That opposition culminated in the Hartford Convention of 1814, where Federalist representatives from the five New England states met to discuss their grievances. At first the air was full of talk of secession from the Union, but soon cooler heads prevailed. The con- vention did insist, however, that a state had the right "to interpose its author- ity" to protect its citizens against unconstitutional federal laws. This
nullification doctrine was not new; Madison and Jefferson had proposed it in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves opposing the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798 (see Chapter 8). In any event, the nullification threat from Hartford was ignored, for peace with Britain was announced as delegates from the con- vention made their way to Washington to deliver their message to Congress. There the convention's grievances were treated not as serious business but
as an anticlimactic joke.
THE TREATY OF GHENT
By 1814, the long Napoleonic Wars in Europe were slowly drawing to a close, and the British decided to end their war with the Americans. The peace treaty, after months of hard negotiation, was signed at Ghent, Belgium, on Christmas Eve in 1814. Like the war itself, the treaty was inconclusive. The major issues of impressment and neutral rights were not mentioned, but the British did agree to evacuate their western posts, and late in the negotiations they aban- doned their insistence on a buffer state for neutral Indian peoples in the
Northwest. For all its international inconsequence, the war did have an important effect
on national morale. Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans allowed Americans to believe that they had defeated the British. It would be more accurate to say that by not losing the war the Americans had ended their own feelings of colonial depen- dency. Equally important, they convinced the British government to stop thinking
of America as its colony. The only clear losers of the war were the northwestern Indian nations and
their southern allies. With the death of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813 and the defeat of the southern Creeks in 1814, the last hope of a united Indian resistance to white expansion perished forever. Britain's abandonment of
its Indian allies in the Treaty of Ghent sealed their fate. By 1815, American settlers
were on their way west again.
8-12 Report and Resolutions of the Hartford Convention (1814)
Nullification A constitutional doctrine holding that a state has a legal right to declare a national law null and void within its borders.
Treaty of Ghent Treaty signed in December 1814 between the United States and Britain that ended the War of 1812.
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228
CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
DEFINING THE BOUNDARIES
w ith the War of 1812 behind them, Americans turned, more seriously than ever before, to the tasks of expansion and national develop-ment. The so-called Era of Good Feelings (1817-23) found politi- cians largely in agreement on a national agenda, and a string of diplomatic achievements forged by John Quincy Adams gave the nation sharper definition. But the limits to expansion also became clear: the Panic of 1819 showed the dan- gers in economic growth, and the Missouri Crisis laid bare the sectional split that attended westward expansion.
ANOTHER WESTWARD SURGE
The end of the War of 1812 was followed by a westward surge to the Mississippi River. The extent of the population redistribution was dramatic: in 1790, about 95 percent of the nation's population had lived in states bordering the Atlantic Ocean; by 1820 hilly 25 percent of the population lived west of the Appalachians (see Map 9.5).
=1111111111111111111.11 WHAT WERE the principle
provisions of the Missouri
Compromise?
myhistcOylab Review Summary
Areas settled by 1800
I. Areas settled by 1820 -4— Major settlement routes
LOUISIANA
Gulf of Mexico
MAP 9.5 Spread of Settlement: Westward Surge, 1800-1820 Within a period of twenty years, a quarter of the nation's population had moved west of the Appalachian Mountains. The westward surge was a dy- namic source of American optimism.
HOW DID westward movement vary by region between 1800 and 1820?
1820 1860 1800 1840
Year
15 Million Acres 1855
20 Milton Acres 1836
20
15
010
0
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824 CHAPTER 9 1141!)11 229 What accounted for this extraordinary westward surge?
There were both push and pull factors. Between 1800 and 1820, the nation's population almost doubled, increasing from 5.3 million to 9.6 million. Overpopulated farmland in all of the seaboard states pushed farmers off the land, while new land pulled them westward. The defeat and removal of Indians in the War of 1812 was another important pull factor.
The most important pull factor, however, was the attractive price of western land. The Land Ordinance of 1785 priced west- ern lands too high for all but speculators and the wealthy (see Chapter 7), but subsequent realities had slowly forced Congress to enact land laws more favorable to the small farmer. The most sustained challenge came from "squatters," who repeatedly took up land before it was officially open for sale and then claimed a "preemption" right of purchase at a lower price that reflected the value of improvements they had made to the land. Congress sought to suppress this illegal settlement and ordered the expulsion of squatters on several occasions but to no avail.
Finally, in the Land Act of 1820, Congress set the price of land at $1.25 an acre, the minimum purchase at eighty acres (in contrast to the 640-acre minimum in 1785) , and a down payment of $100 in cash. This was the most liberal land law yet passed in American history, but the cash requirement still favored speculators, who had more cash than most small farmers (see Figure 9.2). Except in southern Ohio and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, there was very little contact among regional cultures. New Englanders carried their values and lifestyles directly west and settled largely with their own communities; Southerners did the same. One section of northern Ohio along Lake Erie, for example, had been Connecticut's western land claim since the days of its colonial charter. Rather than give up the land when the Northwest Territory was established in 1787, Connecticut held onto the Western Reserve (as it was known) and encouraged its citizens to move there. Group settlement was common. These New Englanders brought to the Western Reserve their religion (Congregational), their love of learning, and their adamant opposition to slavery.
Western migration in the South was very different. On this frontier, the peo- ple clearing the land were African American slaves creating plantations not for
themelves but for their owners. Even before the war, plantation owners in the Natchez district of Mississippi had made fortunes growing cotton, which they shipped to Britain from New Orleans. After the war, as cotton growing expanded,
hopeful slave owners from older parts of the South (Virginia, North and South Car- olina, Georgia) flooded into the region, bringing their slaves with them or, increas- ingly, purchasing new ones supplied by the internal slave trade. More than half of the migrants to the Old Southwest after 1812 were enslaved African Americans. This involuntary migration of slaves tore African American families apart at the same time that white families viewed migration as a chance to replicate the lifestyle
and values of older southern states on this new frontier (see Chapter 10). The western transplantation of distinctive regional cultures explains why,
although by 1820 western states accounted for more than a third of all states (eight out of twenty-three) , the West did not form a third, unified political region. Although there were common western issues—in particular, the demand for bet- ter roads and other transportation routes—communities in the Old Northwest, in general, shared New England political attitudes, whereas those in the Old South-
west shared southern attitudes.
Figure 9.2 Western Land Sales Surges in western land sales reflect surges in westward expansion. Western land sales following the War of 1812
reached an unprecedented 3.5 million
acres, but that was small in comparison
with what was to come in the 1830s and
1850s. Not all land sales reflected actu- al settlement, however, and speculation in western lands was rampant. Collapse
of the postwar speculative boom con-
tributed to the Panic of 1819, and the
abrupt end to the boom of the 1830s led
to the Panic of 1837.
Robert Riegel and Robert Athearn, America Moves West (New York: Holt Rinehart 1964).
QUICK REVIEW
Westward Surge, 1800-1820
♦ By 1820 25 percent of the population lived west of the Appalachians.
• Group settlement was common.
• Lure of new land pulled farmers west.
230 a CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
The hopes of every westward migrant are exemplified in this series of four illustrations imagining inevitable progress from pioneer cabin to prosperous farm. The illustrations, The Pioneer Settler and His Progress," appeared in a booster history advertising land in
western New York.
THE ELECTION OF 1816 AND THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS
In 1816, James Monroe, the last of the Virginia Dynasty, was easily elected presi- dent over his Federalist opponent Rufus King. This was the last election in which
Federalists ran a candidate. Monroe had no opponent in 1820 and was reelected
nearly unanimously (231 to 1). The triumph of the Jeffersonian Republicans over
the Federalists seemed complete.
Monroe's politics reflected changing times. When he visited Boston, as
recently as 1815 the heart of a secession-minded Federalist region, he received
an enthusiastic welcome, prompting the Federalist Columbian Centinel to pro-
claim an "Era of Good Feelings." The phrase has been applied to Monroe's pres-
idency (1817-25) ever since.
Era of Good Feelings The period from 1817 to 1823 in which the disappearance of the Federalists enabled the Republicans to govern in a spirit of seemingly nonpartisan harmony.
American System The program of government subsidies favored by Henry Clay and his followers to promote American economic growth and protect domestic manufacturers from foreign competition.
THE AMERICAN SYSTEM
Monroe sought a government of national unity, and he chose men from North and
South, Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists, for his cabinet. He selected John
Quincy Adams, a former Federalist, as his secretary of state, virtually assuring that
Adams, like his father, would become president. To balance Adams, Monroe picked John
C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a prominent War Hawk, as secretary of war. And Mon-
roe supported the American System, a program of national economic development that became identified with westerner Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives.
In supporting the American System, Monroe was following President Madi-
son, who had proposed the program in his message to Congress in December
1815. Madison and Monroe broke with Jefferson's agrarianism to embrace much
of the Federalist program for economic development, including the chartering
of a national bank, a tax on imported goods to protect American manufactur-
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o- 1824 CHAPTER 9 231
ers, and a national system of roads and canals. All three of these had first been proposed by Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s (see Chapter 8). At the time, these proposals had met with bitter Jeffersonian Republican opposition. The support that Madison and Monroe gave to Hamilton's ideas following the War of 1812 was a crucial sign of the dynamism of the American commercial econ- omy. Many Republicans now acknowledged that the federal government had a role to play in fostering the economic and commercial conditions in which both yeoman farmer and merchant could succeed.
In 1816, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United States for twenty years. Because they feared the economic power of rich men, Jeffersonian Repub-
licans had allowed the charter of the original Bank of the United States, founded in 1791, to expire in 1811. The Republican about-face in 1816 was a sign that the strength of commercial interests had grown to rival that of farmers, whose dis- trust for central banks persisted.
The Tariff of 1816 was the first substantial protective tariff in American his- tory. In 1815, British manufacturers, who had been excluded for eight years (from
the Embargo Act of 1807 to the end of the War of 1812), flooded the U.S. market with their products. American manufacturers complained that the British were dumping goods below cost in order to prevent the growth of American industries. Congress responded with a tariff on imported woolens and cottons, on iron, leather, hats, paper, and sugar. The measure had southern as well as northern support, although in later years, differences over the passage of higher tariffs would become one of the most persistent sources of sectional conflict.
The third item in the American System, funding for roads and canals—inter- nal improvements, as they came to be known—was more controversial. Monroe and Madison both supported genuinely national (that is, interstate) projects such as the National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. Congress- men, however, aware of the urgent need to improve transportation in general, and sensing the political advantages from directing funds to their districts, proposed spending federal money on local projects. Both Madison and Monroe vetoed such local proposals, believing them to be unconstitutional.
The support of Madison and Monroe for measures initially identified with their political opposition was an indicator of their realism. The three aspects of the American System—bank, tariff, roads—were all parts of the basic infrastruc- ture that the American economy needed in order to develop. Briefly, during the Era of Good Feelings, politicians agreed about the need for all three. Later, each would be a source of heated partisan argument.
THE DIPLOMACY OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
The diplomatic achievements of the Era of Good Feelings were due almost entirely to the efforts of one man, John Quincy Adams, Monroe's secretary of state. Adams set himself the task of tidying up the borders of the United States. Two accords with Britain—the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 and the Convention of 1818—fixed the border between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel and resolved conflicting U.S. and British claims to Oregon with an agreement to occupy it jointly for ten (eventually twenty) years.
Adams's major diplomatic accomplishment was the Adams-Onis or Transcon- tinental Treaty of 1819, in which he skillfully wrested concessions from the falter- ing Spanish empire. Adams convinced Spain not only to cede Florida but also to
drop all previous claims it had to the Louisiana Territory and Oregon. In return, the United States relinquished claims on Texas and assumed responsibility for the $5 million in claims that U.S. citizens had against Spain.
9-7 Henry Clay, Defense of the American System (1832)
Tariff of 1816 A tax imposed by Congress on imported goods.
Rush -Bagot Treaty of 1817 Treaty between the United States and Britain that effectively demilitarized the Great Lakes by sharply limiting the number of ships each power could station on them.
232 it CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o-1824 Monroe Doctrine Declaration by President James Monroe in 1823 that the Western Hemisphere was to be closed off to further European colonization and that the United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of European nations.
ALA 9-6 The Monroe Doctrine and a Reaction (1823)
Finally, Adams picked his way through the remarkable changes occurring in Latin America, developing the policy that bears his president's name, the Monroe Doctrine. The United States was the first country outside Latin America to recog- nize the independence of Spain's former colonies. When the European powers (France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia) began to talk of a plan to help Spain recover the lost colonies, what was the United States to do? The British, suspicious of the European powers, proposed a British-American declaration against European intervention in the hemisphere. Others might have been flattered by an approach from the British empire, but Adams would have none of it. Showing the national pride that was so characteristic of the era, Adams insisted on an independent American policy. He therefore drafted for the president the hemispheric policy that the United States has followed ever since.
On December 2, 1823, the president presented the Monroe Doctrine to Congress and the world. He called for the end of colonization of the Western Hemisphere by European nations (this was aimed as much at Russia and its Pacific Coast settlements as at other European powers). Intervention by European pow- ers in the affairs of the independent New World nations would be considered by the United States a danger to its own peace and safety. Finally, Monroe pledged that the United States would not interfere in the affairs of European countries or in the affairs of their remaining New World colonies.
All of this was a very loud bark from a very small dog. In 1823, the United States lacked the military and economic force to back up its grand statement. In fact, what kept the European powers out of Latin America was British opposition to European intervention, enforced by the Royal Navy. The Monroe Doctrine was, however, useful in Adams's last diplomatic achievement, the Convention of 1824, in which Russia gave up its claim to the Oregon Territory and accepted 54°40' north latitude as the southern border of Russian America. Thus, Adams had con- tained another possible threat to American continental expansion (see Map 9.6).
THE PANIC OF 1819
Across this impressive record of political and economic nation building fell the shadow of the Panic of 1819. A delayed reaction to the end of the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars, the panic forced Americans to come to terms with their eco- nomic place in a peaceful world. As British merchant ships resumed trade on routes they had abandoned during the wars, the American shipping boom ended. And as European farm production recovered from the wars, the international demand for American foodstuffs declined and American farmers and shippers suffered.
Domestic economic conditions made matters worse. The western land boom that began in 1815 turned into a speculative frenzy. Land sales, which had totaled 1 million acres in 1815, mushroomed to 3.5 million in 1818. Many settlers bought on credit, aided by small "wildcat" state banks that made loans far beyond their resources. This was not the first—or the last—speculative boom in western lands. But it ended like all the rest—with a sharp contraction of credit, begun on this occa- sion by the Second Bank of the United States, which in 1819 forced state banks to foreclose on many bad loans. Many small farmers were ruined, and they blamed the faraway Bank of the United States for their troubles. In the 1830s, Andrew Jackson would build a political movement on their resentment.
Urban workers lost their jobs as international trade declined and as manufac- turers failed because of competition from British imports. As they lobbied for local relief, many workers became deeply involved in urban politics, where they could express their resentment against the merchants and owners who had laid them off. Thus developed another component of Andrew Jackson's new political coalition.
d R
PACIFIC
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• Fort Ross
SPANISH
TERRITORY
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790 -1824 CHAPTER 9
233
Adams-Onis Treaty, 1819
Rush-Bagot Treaty, 1817, with Convention of 1818
■••■. Convention of 1824
RUSSIAN
sci TERRITORY
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
OREGON
COUNTRY (US and
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ALABAMA GEORGIA
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°New Orleans FLORIDA
TERRITORY
Gulf of Mexico
MAP 9.6
John Quincy Adams's Border Treaties John Quincy Adams, secretary of state in the Monroe adminis-
tration (1817-25), solidified the nation's boundaries in several treaties with Britain and Spain: the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 and the Conventions of 1818 and 1824 and the Adams-Onis Treaty
of 1819.
WHAT AGREEMENTS were reached in the treaties signed by John Quincy Adams to settle U.S. borders?
Another confrontation arose over the tariff. Southern planters, hurt by a decline in the price of cotton, began to actively protest the protective tariff, which kept the price of imported goods high even when cotton prices were low. Manu- facturers, hurt by British competition, lobbied for even higher rates, which they achieved in 1824 over southern protests. Southerners then began to express doubts about the fairness of a political system in which they were always outvoted.
The Panic of 1819 was a symbol of this transitional time. It showed how far the country had moved since 1800, from Jefferson's republic of yeoman farmers toward a nation dominated by commerce. And the anger and resentment expressed by the groups harmed by the depression—farmers, urban workers, and southern planters—were portents of the politics of the upcoming Jackson era.
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234
CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1 790- 182 4
9-5 Thomas Jefferson Reacts to the "Missouri Question" (1820)
THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
In the Missouri Crisis of 1819-21, the nation confronted the momentous issue that had been buried in the general enthusiasm for expansion: as America moved west, would the largely southern system of slavery expand as well? Until 1819, this ques- tion was decided regionally. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 explicitly banned slavery in the northern section of trans-Appalachia but made no mention of it else- where. Because so much of the expansion into the Old Northwest and Southwest was lateral (Northerners stayed in the North, Southerners in the South), there was little conflict over sectional differences. In 1819, however, the sections collided in Missouri, which applied for admission to the Union as a slave state (see Map 9.7).
The northern states, all of which had abolished slavery by 1819, were opposed to the extension of slavery. In addition to the moral issue, the Missouri question raised the political issue of sectional balance. Northern politicians did not want to
RUSSIAN
TERRITORY
BRITISH
NORTH AMERICA
I I Free states and territories LAI Slave states and territories MI Open to slavery by Missouri Compromise 1.1 Closed to slavery by Missouri Compromise
— Missouri Compromise Line
OREGON
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(US and
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Gulf of Mexico
MAP 9.7 The Missouri Compromise Before the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Ohio River was the dividing line between the free states of the Old
Northwest and the slaveholding states of the Old Southwest. The compromise stipulated that Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state
(balanced by Maine, a free state), but slavery would be prohibited in the Louisiana Territory north of 36°30' (Missouri's southern boundary).
This awkward compromise lasted until 1846, when the Mexican-American War reopened the issue of the expansion of slavery.
HOW DIED westward expansion create added pressure to resolve the question of slavery?
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 5790- 1824
3 CHAPTER 9 235 CHRONOLOGY
1800 Thomas Jefferson elected president
1802 Russian-American Company headquarters established at Sitka, Alaska
1803 Louisiana Purchase
Marbury v. Madison
Ohio admitted to the Union
1804 Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis
Thomas Jefferson reelected president
1807 Chesapeake-Leopard incident
Embargo Act
1808 James Madison elected president
1809 Tecumseh forms military alliance among Northwest Confederacy peoples
1811 Battle of Tippecanoe
1812 War of 1812 begins
James Madison reelected president
Louisiana admitted to the Union
1815 Battle of New Orleans
1816 James Monroe elected president
Congress charters Second Bank of the United States
Indiana admitted to the Union
1817 Mississippi admitted to the Union
1818 Illinois admitted to the Union
1819 Panic of 1819
Adams-Onis Treaty
Alabama admitted to the Union
1819-20 Missouri Crisis and Compromise
1820 James Monroe reelected president
Maine admitted to the Union
1821 Missouri admitted to the Union as a slave state
1823 Monroe Doctrine
1814 Treaty of Ghent
admit another slave state. To do so would tip the balance of power in the Senate. For
their part, Southerners believed they needed an advantage in the Senate; because of faster population growth in the North, they were already outnumbered (105 to 81) in the House of Representatives. But above all, Southerners did not believe Con- gress had the power to limit the expansion of slavery. Slavery, in southern eyes, was a question of property and, therefore, a matter for state rather than federal legislation.
In 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York began more than a year of congressional controversy when he demanded that Missouri agree to the gradual end of slavery as the price of entering the Union. At first, the general pub-
lic paid little attention, but religious reformers (Quakers prominent among them) organized a number of antislavery rallies in northern cities that made politicians take notice. This was the first time that the growing northern reform impulse had
intersected with sectional politics. It was also the first time that southern threats of secession were made openly in Congress.
In 1820, Congress achieved compromise over the sectional differences. Henry Clay forged the first of the many agreements that were to earn him the title of "the Great Pacificator" (peacemaker). The Missouri Compromise maintained the bal- ance between free and slave states: Maine (which had been part of Massachusetts) was admitted as a free state in 1820 and Missouri as a slave state in the following year. A policy was also enacted with respect to slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Pur- chase: slavery was prohibited north of 36°30' north latitude—the southern bound-
ary of Missouri—and permitted south of that line. This meant that the vast majority of the Louisiana Territory would be free. In reality, then, the Missouri Compro- mise could be only a temporary solution, because it left open the question of how the balance between slave and free states would be maintained.
Missouri Compromise Sectional compromise in Congress in 1820 that admitted Missouri to the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state and prohibited slavery in the northern Louisiana Purchase territory.
236 CHAPTER 9 AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 179o-1824
CONCLUSION
1 n complex ways a developing economy, geographical expansion, and even a minor war helped shape American unity. Local, small, settled, face-to-face communities in both the North and the South began to send their more mo- ble, expectant members to new occupations in urban centers or west to form new settlements.
The westward population movement dramatically changed the political landscape and Americans' view of themselves. But expansion did not create the "empire for liberty" that Thomas Jefferson had hoped for. While expansion did indeed create economic opportunity, it also displaced and destroyed Indian communities such as the Mandans, the Shawnee, and many others. And it also created an even greater denial of liberty, as we shall see in the next chapter, in a greatly expanded community tied to cotton and to the slave labor that pro- duced it.
REVIEW QUES IONS 1. What economic and political problems did the United States face as a
new nation in a world dominated by war between Britain and France? How successful were the efforts by the Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe administrations to solve these problems?
2. The anti-European cast of Jefferson's republican agrarianism made it appealing to many Americans who wished to believe in their nation's uniqueness, but how realistic was it?
3. Some Federalists opposed the Louisiana Purchase, warning of the
dangers of westward expansion. What are arguments for and against expansion?
4. What contradictions in American Indian policy did the confrontations between Tecumseh's alliance and soldiers and settlers in the Old Northwest reveal? Can you suggest solutions to these contradictions?
5. What did the War of 1812 accomplish?
6. What were the issues that made it impossible for the Era of Good Feelings to last?
KEY TERMS
myhis- tc:eylab Flashcard Review
American System (p. 230) Embargo Act (p. 220) Era of Good Feelings (p. 230) Marbury v. Madison (p. 216) Missouri Compromise (p. 235) Monroe Doctrine (p. 232) Nullification (p. 227)
Pan-Indian military resistance movement (p. 222)
Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 (p. 231) Tariff of 1816 (p. 231) Treaty of Ghent (p. 227) War Hawks (p. 224) War of 1812 (p. 224)
AN EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY, 1790-1824
RECOMMENDED READING Catharine Allgor, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City
and a Government (2000). Describes the vital role that women played in the politics of the new capital city.
Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West (1996). This heroic version of the expedi- tion is told by a master storyteller. It ought, however, to be supplemented by the Ronda version cited below that pays attention to the Indian side of the story.
Walter Borneman, 1812: The War That Forged a Nation (2004). A very readable account.
R. David Edmunds, Tecumseh and the Quest for Indian Leadership (1984). A sympa- thetic portrait.
Joseph J. Ellis, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (1998). An en- gaging exploration of Jefferson's many contradictions.
John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek (1987). The fullest examination of the lives of pioneers in the Old Northwest.
Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (2007). Discusses both contemporary debates over the compromise and its impact.
Jon Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of Amer- ica (2003). A personality-filled account of the negotiations and of various hopes and plans for Louisiana.
Glover Moore, The Missouri Controversy, 1819-1821 (1953). The standard account.
Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson's Empire (2000). A thoughtful study of Jefferson's ideas about republicanism, empire, and nationalism.
James Ronda, Lewis and Clark among the Indians (1984). An innovative look at the famous explorers through the eyes of the Indian peoples they encountered.
h t.4 lab
es Where its a good time to connect to
y the past!
For study resources for this chapter, go to www.myhistorylab.com and choose Out of Many, Teaching and Learning Classroom Edition. You will find a wealth of study and review material for this chapter, including pretests and posttests, customized study plan, key-term review
flash cards, interactive map and document activities, and documents for analysis.
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