Nationalism was a dominant political force in the years following the War of 1812. It affected economic and foreign policy and was supported by Supreme Court rulings. The building of the nation’s pride and identity were important developments that helped the country grow.
In this lesson, you will learn to do the following:
* Analyze the causes and effects of nationalism on domestic policy during the years following the War of 1812
* Describe the impact of nationalism on the nation’s foreign policy
* Summarize the struggle over the issue of slavery as the nation grew
Nationalism Shapes Domestic Policies
In 1817, a newspaper in Boston described politics as entering an “era of good feelings.” The Democratic Republican Party operated almost without opposition. In the election of 1820, James Monroe won reelection as President by receiving almost all of the electoral votes cast. (John Quincy Adams received one electoral vote.) A spirit of nationalism—a glorification of the nation—swept the country.
Nationalist Economic Policies
Some economic policies promoted the growth of industry. A leading example was the Tariff of 1816. By embracing a protective tariff, many Democratic Republicans betrayed their former principles. Once they had opposed federal power, supported agriculture, and favored trade unburdened by tariffs. Now they used federal power to help industrialists and their workers.
Henry Clay was one of the leading advocates of this new economic nationalism. He regarded the protective tariff as part of a larger, ambitious federal program he called the American System. Clay and his supporters wanted the federal government to build new roads and canals to link the Atlantic states with the Midwest. Clay insisted that the tariff and “internal improvements” would work together to tie the different regions into a harmonious and prosperous whole.
Clay also favored reestablishment of a national bank. The charter for the first Bank of the United States, created during Washington’s administration, expired in 1811. That freed private and state banks to print their own money, which caused widespread uncertainty about the value of money.
A national bank, Clay argued, would provide federal control over the nation’s money supply and banking practices. In 1816, Congress established the second Bank of the United States. But most congressmen opposed using federal funds for internal improvements.
Think About It
Why did Clay favor reestablishment of a national bank?
Marshall and the Supreme Court Boost Federal Power
Under John Marshall, who served as Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835, the Supreme Court favored a strong federal government and a national economy. Marshall applied several Federalist principles to interpret the Constitution. For example, the Marshall Court claimed the power to review the acts of Congress and of the President for their constitutionality.
This was established in the landmark decision Marbury v. Madison (1803). Marshall also insisted upon the “sanctity of contracts.” In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) and Fletcher v. Peck (1810), the Marshall Court limited a state government’s power to interfere in business contracts.
Further, the Marshall Court insisted that federal law was superior to state law. This point was famously established in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). The case involved the renewed Bank of the United States. When it was reestablished in 1816, branches were placed in states across the country. In effect, the bank competed with and threatened many state and local banks. In Maryland, state officials tried to defend their banks by levying a tax on the operations of the Bank of the United States.
The Marshall Court struck down this Maryland law. Embracing a broad interpretation of the Constitution, Marshall insisted that Congress had the power to charter a national bank. Further, no state could destroy such a bank with taxes.
Finally, Marshall broadly interpreted the Constitution to give greater power to the national government. In the 1824 case Gibbons v. Ogden, Marshall rejected a steamboat monopoly granted by the state of New York. The monopoly threatened the business of a steamboat operator who had run a service between New Jersey and New York. Marshall ruled that steamboat traffic was “commerce” and that the power to regulate commerce involving more than one state—interstate commerce—belonged to the federal government.
As in McCulloch v. Maryland, the ruling extended federal power by creating a broad definition of commerce and by asserting the supremacy of federal over state law.
In general, Marshall’s Court encouraged the development of large, far-flung business corporations by freeing them from meddling by the states. (Think, for example, how difficult it might have been to build a railroad company that covered several states if each state had the power to establish its own monopolies within its borders.) Corporations took the place of the older, smaller, and simpler forms of business—single proprietorships and limited partnerships whose reach was confined to a small area. Due in part to the Marshall Court, the United States increasingly became one large integrated market.
Economy Experiences Panics
As the national market emerged and more enterprises became interconnected over greater distances, the economy became subject to periodic shocks, or panics. These panics were the result of “busts” in a “boom-and-bust” cycle that is common in capitalism.
In capitalism, individuals own most productive property—factories and farms—and markets set prices. During the “boom” phase, high consumer demand encourages owners to expand production. But once the expanded supply of goods exceeds demand, a “bust” follows. Prices fall and producers cut back on production, closing factories and firing workers. Those jobless workers then have less to spend, hurting other businesses.
Between 1815 and 1860, there were three great panics that occurred: 1819, 1837, and 1857. Thousands of factory workers lost their jobs. The panics also hurt farmers and planters as demand declined for their grain or cotton. When farm prices fell, many farmers and planters could not pay their debts. They, therefore, lost their properties to lawsuits and foreclosures.
Panics led many workers and farmers to doubt capitalism—or at least to blame the banks, especially the Bank of the United States. The panics lifted after a year or two, however, and “boom” times returned. These economic revivals quieted the doubts.
American Art and Literature Flourish
Nationalism also influenced art and literature. Artists celebrated America’s beautiful landscape, while novelists expressed pride in the nation’s immense potential. A period known as the American Renaissance ensued, in which literature reflected the nationalistic spirit.
James Fenimore Cooper of New York became the first American to make a career as a novelist. His most celebrated novels, a series known as The Leatherstocking Tales, created the genre of frontier adventure tales that persists to this day. There were also several regional voices in literature. For instance, Cooper influenced William Gilmore Simms, a southern writer who gave frontier stories a more southern voice.
Guided Practice
Nationalism Influences Foreign Affairs
Nationalism also influenced the nation’s foreign policy. A key figure in this development was John Quincy Adams, James Monroe’s Secretary of State and the son of former President John Adams. Monroe and Adams hoped to reduce the nation’s great regional tensions by promoting national expansion.
Expanding the United States
In 1819, American pressure and Adams’s diplomacy persuaded Spain to sell Florida to the United States. Spain had felt pressured to give up their claims by the First Seminole War that occurred in 1818. The Seminoles were an American Indian group from southern Georgia and northern Florida, an area that was then part of Spain. Seminoles clashed often with white settlers, who were upset with the Seminoles for providing safe havens for runaway slaves.
American General Andrew Jackson led a force into Florida to fight the Seminoles and seized Spanish forts. Though Jackson had not been told to act against the Spanish, the episode made it clear that Spanish control of Florida was very weak. Ratified in 1821, the Adams-Onís Treaty also ended Spanish claims to the vast Pacific Coast territory of Oregon.
The British also claimed Oregon, but in 1818, the United States and Great Britain agreed to share the contested territory. Following the Adams-Onís Treaty, Americans began to settle in Florida and pursue the fur trade in Oregon.
The Monroe Doctrine
Adams also formulated the famous foreign policy doctrine named for President Monroe—the Monroe Doctrine. This policy responded to threats by European powers, including France, to help Spain recover Latin American colonies that had declared their independence.
Monroe and Adams were eager to protect those new republics. The British shared that goal and proposed uniting with the United States to warn the other European powers to stay out of Latin America.
Adams and Monroe, however, preferred to act without a British partner. In 1823, Monroe issued a written doctrine declaring that European monarchies had no business meddling with American republics. In return, the United States promised to stay out of European affairs.
The occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers
James Monroe, address to Congress, December 2, 1823
The Monroe Doctrine meant little in 1823 when the Americans lacked the army and navy to enforce it. The Latin American republics kept their independence with British, rather than American, help. The doctrine did, however, reflect the nation’s growing desire for power. The doctrine became much more significant in the 1890s and in the twentieth century, when the United States increasingly sent armed forces into Latin American countries.
Guided Practice
The Nation Compromises Over Slavery
The spirit of nationalism failed to suppress regional differences in the United States. Such differences made the nation more difficult to govern. In 1819, this difficulty became evident in a crisis over Missouri’s admission to the Union as a new state.
At that point, the Union had an equal number of slave and free states—which meant equal regional power in the United States Senate. If Missouri entered the Union as a slave state, it would tip the balance in favor of the South. This prospect alarmed northern congressmen. A New York congressman proposed banning slavery in Missouri as a price for joining the Union. The proposed ban outraged southern leaders, who claimed a right to expand slavery westward.
The Nation Compromises Over Slavery
In 1820, after a long and bitter debate, Henry Clay crafted the Missouri Compromise. The northern district of Massachusetts would enter the Union as the free state of Maine to balance admission of Missouri as a slave state.
To discourage future disputes over state admissions, the compromise also drew a line across the continent from the southwestern corner of Missouri to the nation’s western boundary. Territories south of that line would enter as slave states. Those north of the line would become free states.The compromise solved the short-term crisis. But that crisis had exposed the growing division between the North and the South over the expansion of slavery. Jefferson worried, “This momentous question, like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once the [death] knell of the Union.”
Southern whites felt insulted by the northern attacks on their region’s reliance on slavery. They also felt threatened. In 1822, they blamed the Missouri debates for inspiring Denmark Vesey to plan a slave revolt. Vesey, a black freedman, prepared slaves to seize control of Charleston, South Carolina.
The revolt, however, never took place because Charleston officials learned of the plot. These officials arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged Vesey and 34 others. Anxious over their close call, southern politicians insisted that their safety required northern silence on slavery.
Guided Practice
Check Your Understanding