James Monroe, born on 28 April 1758, was wounded in the Battle of Trenton in 1776 and promoted to Captain. He was a delegate from Virginia during the Confederation 1783-86 and opposed ratifying the US Constitution. Madison defeated him for Congress in the first election; but Monroe was elected a US Senator in 1790, and he was ambassador to France 1794-96 and to Britain 1803-07 after serving as Virginia Governor 1799-1802. In 1808 Madison prevailed over Monroe again getting the Republican nomination for President. They were reconciled in March 1811 when Madison made him Secretary of State. Monroe was most useful to Madison and was also put in charge of the War Department. In the 1816 election Monroe won the Democratic-Republican nomination for President over William H. Crawford and easily defeated the Federalist candidate Rufus King with 68% of the vote. Daniel D. Tompkins, who had been Governor of New York since 1807, was elected Vice President. As Governor in 1817 he had speeded up the ending of slavery there to 4 July 1827.
The second Bank of the United States began operating in Philadelphia on 7 January 1817. South Carolinian John C. Calhoun in February proposed a Bonus Bill with the Bank providing $1.5 million for public works, and in February the US Congress passed the bill. The Mississippi Territory was divided in two with the eastern half becoming the Alabama Territory on March 1. That day the British Navigation Act limited the importation of produce from the British West Indies to US ships but allowed British vessels to export produce from the US to the West Indies. On March 3 President Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill to uphold Jefferson’s principles, but Madison in November would persuade Monroe to accept the internal improvements amendment.
In his inaugural address on 4 March 1817 outdoors on the Capital steps in warm weather President James Monroe to 8,000 people spoke of Republican nationalism in the tradition of Jefferson and Madison, promising to promote harmony and republican principles. Congress had raised tariffs to 20% in 1816 to promote American manufacturing, and he agreed to protect factories, improve roads, and build canals. The federal post roads were 48,976 miles in 1816 and would increase to 72,496 miles by 1820. He asked if anyone could deny that no one had been oppressed or deprived of rights, ignoring the 1.5 million African slaves, Native Americans, and women. He hoped that political parties would not be needed in a free government. The US national debt hit a peak in 1816 at $127 million, but in his two terms Monroe would reduce it to $84 million. On March 6 he wrote to John Quincy Adams in England offering him the State Department. Monroe kept on Crawford as Secretary of the Treasury, and Richard Rush continued as Attorney General and handled the State Department until Adams returned from Europe and took the oath of office on September 22.
On March 15 the New York legislature authorized $7 million to build the Erie Canal from Albany to Buffalo. Governor De Witt Clinton broke ground for it on July 4, and it was to be about 500 miles long and the first designed by Americans. By 1816 the US had only 100 miles of canals. They would raise $8 million from sold land, taxes on salt, auctions, lotteries, appropriations, and tolls.
On April 7 about 200 slaves attacked whites in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. Many free blacks had gathered in Philadelphia and other places to oppose plans to send them back to Africa by the American Colonization Society which was founded in 1816 by Presbyterian minister Robert Finley, Henry Clay, and other leaders in Washington.
On April 17 the naval treaty negotiated by acting US Secretary of State Richard Rush and the British Charles Bagot was signed which allowed their nations only one warship in each of the Great Lakes, and the Senate would ratify it one year later. Both sides maintained border forts, but later Canada and the US cooperated on naval training and construction.
The new President toured the nation, and on July 12 the Federalist newspaper Columbian Sentinel in Boston called it an “era of good feeling.” The Federalist party was declining. John Quincy Adams had left it in 1807. President Monroe returned to Washington on October 20 and had long sessions with his cabinet. He made William Wirt the Attorney General in November. On December 2 in his annual message to Congress he explained his policies of neutrality and recognizing independent Latin American republics. The US War Department was in such a mess that four men declined to be Secretary of War until Monroe in October named Calhoun who led a group of “war hawks” in Congress. He had made the speech urging a declaration of war against Britain in 1812 based on a secret text by Monroe. On December 10 Mississippi became the 20th state and the tenth slave state.
On December 16 John Griscom and philanthropic citizens in New York founded the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, and they presented public reports every year. James Gerard’s report in February 1823 would lead to the establishment of the New York House of Refuge for juvenile delinquents.
Other significant events in 1817 included Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founding at Hartford in April the first school in America for the deaf, hoping to create an efficient sign language. William Cullen Bryant’s father published his son’s popular poem “Thanatopsis” (Considering Death) in the North American Review in September. Thomas Jefferson in November wrote to educator George Ticknor that knowledge is power, safety, and happiness. Ticknor traveled to Germany, and in July 1823 he would suggest to the Harvard faculty reforms such as using departments of study.
Thomas Gilpin in Wilmington was the first American to manufacture paper with a machine. Henry Clay imported the first Hereford cows into the United States. New Hampshire ended the establishment of the Congregational Church. Journalist William Cobbett observed that literacy was more widespread in America than in Europe. David Crockett was appointed a magistrate in Tennessee. The first Methodist began preaching in the Red River area of Texas. Harvard opened its law school. Handel’s complete Messiah premiered in Boston, and Anthony Heinrich conducted in Louisville the first Beethoven symphony in America.
In 1817 the population of the United States was nearly nine million, and an estimated 30,000 immigrants arrived in the US that year. There were 3,459 post offices and more than 300 newspapers. Walter Scott’s novels were so popular that by 1823 Americans would buy 500,000 copies.
On the first day of 1818 President Monroe and his wife Elizabeth opened the newly painted President’s House for a reception, and visitors began calling it the “White House.” On that day Yale professor Benjamin Silliman founded the American Journal of Science and the Arts. On the 5th the Black Ball Line began regular trans-Atlantic shipping from New York, and speculators predicted that New York would dominate European trade. On January 19 Alabama began holding its territorial assembly at St. Stephens.
John Adams on February 13 sent his essay “On the Meaning of the American Revolution” to Hezekiah Niles who edited the Weekly Register. Adams made the significant observation that the American Revolution occurred peacefully in the hearts and minds of the people with little violence before the war for independence began in April 1775. He believed that early period was “the real American Revolution.” He urged the study of how this mental transformation occurred, and Niles would gather research and publish his Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America in 1822.
Henry Clay had served as Speaker of the House from March 1811 to January 1814 and then from March 1815 to October 1820. He believed that Congress had the power to finance public improvements, and on 13 March 1818 he made a speech arguing that it is constitutional; but the House defeated his appropriation bill 115-45. He believed in a “liberal construction” of the Constitution for commerce including roads and whatever preserves the Union. The Speaker appointed all the committees and their chairmen, but Clay followed national concerns and made sure all interests and regions were represented. On the 25th he urged the Congress to recognize the Latin American nations that were becoming independent of Spain, especially the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata for which he wanted money for an expedition to Buenos Aires, but the House defeated that funding 113-43. Clay noted that most of the Latin American republics were ahead of the US in emancipating slaves. His speeches were translated into Spanish and read to armies in Latin American republics.
Also in March the US Congress approved pensions for Revolutionary War veterans. On April 18 Congress passed a law closing US ports to British ships coming from colonies closed to US vessels. British tonnage arriving in US ports would decrease from 174,935 in 1817 to 36,333 in 1819. The Rush-Bagot disarmament treaty ratified by the US Senate on April 18 made the long border between Canada and the US unfortified and declared the Great Lakes neutral and limited the United States and British navies there to three vessels each plus one on Lake Champlain. Kentucky had incorporated 40 banks in 1817, and in the spring of 1818 bankers were extending credit and taking on debt, creating paper assets.
After Congress adjourned on April 20 Monroe went on a tour of the southern states, then the west to St. Louis, and returned through Kentucky. Jefferson wrote to the Polish Jew Mordecai Noah in May that more needed to be done to overcome religious intolerance and fanaticism. After leaving the presidency in 1817 James Madison agreed to be president of the Agricultural Society in Albemarle, Virginia in order to promote improvements in farming. He addressed the Society on 12 May 1818 and offered various criticisms of current practices including where and how to plant, not to neglect using manures and irrigation, and warning against having too many cattle and excessive destruction of timber. On July 4 the US flag was redesigned with 13 stripes and 20 stars.
In August 1818 Robert McQueen’s steamship Walk-in-the-Water began a line between Buffalo and Detroit with a $24 fare for the 44-hour voyage. In October the US established a military post on the Isle au Vache in the Missouri River. The National Road was extended to Wheeling where the Ohio River provided transportation.
On October 20 the Anglo-American Convention was signed in London to renew American fishing rights off Newfoundland and Labrador. The border between Canada and the Louisiana territory was set at the 49th parallel except that Britain and the US agreed to share the Oregon Country without recognizing claims by Russia and Spain. The US Senate ratified this without objections. On December 3 Illinois became the 21st state and included the village of Chicago. Illinois had been free of slaves as part of the Northwest Territory, and the state’s constitution banned slavery.
Also in 1818 the St. Stephens Steamship Company connected that town with Mobile, Alabama. New Hampshire made $13.34 the amount of debt needed to be placed in debtors’ prison. Free Negroes formed the Pennsylvania Augustine Society to educate “people of color.” The Walla Walla trading post began facilitating the fur trade in the Oregon Territory. Scots introduced curling and golf. Connecticut disestablished the Congregational Church. Grasshoppers wiped out Red River Valley crops in Minnesota. Gouverneur Kemble started a foundry for cannons at West Point, New York. The Orleans Theatre began showing operas from Paris. In December the Virginia Board of Public Works recommended the ideas of the civil engineer Loammi Baldwin, Jr. from Boston. Jefferson and Madison worked on the Rockfish Gap Commission that recommended the purposes of the University of Virginia which was chartered in 1819 as Jefferson became the first rector. The Methodist minister Jacob Gruber criticized slavery in Maryland and was charged with inciting insurrection, and Roger Taney defended him in his trial in March 1819.
In 1818 Jeremiah Thompson led British Quakers in starting the Black Ball Line that used the port of New York as a hub for supercargoes carrying mostly cotton from the South. They had offices in Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans, giving them three-quarters of the cotton trade on the coast by 1825. That year the Erie Canal would begin helping New York merchants distribute westward two-thirds of American imports of sugar and coffee. New York City which had 100,000 people in 1815 would double its population by 1830.
Many prominent men such as John Adams, Madison, Monroe, and Daniel Webster preferred the status quo on suffrage and opposed extending the vote to men without property. After the 1816 elections Connecticut called a convention to revise their state constitution, and they expanded the suffrage to all adult white males who paid taxes or served in the militia. The only northern state that had drawn the racial line before was New Jersey. A Massachusetts convention also passed reforms which expanded religious liberty, giving tax money to Unitarians and Congregationalists.
DeWitt Clinton was elected Governor of New York in 1817, and he planned to complete the Erie canal connecting New York to the Great Lakes. The Republican “Bucktails” re-elected him in 1820, and they dominated New York’s convention in 1821. In September Nathan Sanford spoke in favor of suffrage for all white taxpayers and was supported by liberals, but Chancellor James Kent and US Senator Martin Van Buren were opposed. New York had almost 30,000 free persons of color and 10,000 slaves to be freed gradually by 1827. Their convention ended the property requirement for white voters; but they increased it for free blacks to $250 in property to vote, and they had a three-year residency requirement that whites did not have. New Yorkers eligible to vote increased to 260,000 from 100,000 for the assembly and from 200,000 for governor.
Alabama and Mississippi revised their constitutions. Indiana allowed white male taxpayers to vote. Illinois had no taxpaying requirement, and their 1818 constitution banned slavery and black suffrage. Virginia and North Carolina retained property restrictions on voting, and South Carolina limited office-holding by property. New Jersey had been the only state where women could vote, and they took it away. In October 1821 the Niles’ Weekly Register published an editorial supporting the liberal view for widening suffrage, writing,
As a general principle, then, we hold it to be equitable
that every citizen who may be called
into military service of a state, at the hazard of his life,
by privation or exposure in battle, or who is liable
to a poll or other taxes on his person or property,
should have the right of voting
for any office in the gift of the people;
and a vote in one district should have the weight
as a vote in another district, not as it is in Maryland, etc.,
where one vote, in certain counties, has twenty times
the influence of a like vote in other counties;
but this high privilege should be carefully guarded
that it may be rightly exercised.1
While Congress was decreasing the army, General Andrew Jackson complained and wanted it increased tenfold. He retired from the army, and President Monroe asked him to govern the newly acquired territory of Florida. Tennessee Senator John Eaton and other friends eager for land speculation urged Jackson to accept, and he did so to secure the frontier and influence migration despite his wife Rachel’s opposition. Jackson agreed to govern Florida until the territory was organized with a salary of $5,000 plus expenses. Monroe also appointed two judges, two district attorneys, two secretaries, three collectors, and a marshal. Although Jackson retired from the army on 1 June 1821, he continued to give orders to troops. The Spanish Governor Col. José Callava delayed turning over official papers to the Marshal Forbes in Havana. Callava knew no English, and Jackson could not speak Spanish.
Finally on July 17 Jackson entered Pensacola for the formal transfer of power. Monroe’s senior appointees had not arrived, and that allowed Jackson to rely on his staff. Jackson had much authority but could not impose or collect new taxes, though he persuaded the town council to do so. He set up a Board of Health and ordered hospitals repaired. During this period Jackson’s mood was influenced by his poor health. His religious wife Rachel demanded that the Sabbath not be profaned, and her husband imposed a fine of $200 for violations of his decree against sabbath-breakers.
Monroe appointed the ex-Jesuit Eligius Fromentin the federal judge of West Florida, and he conspired with Callava and John Innerarity, who represented the merchant Forbes and Company which refused to enact the will affecting Mercedes Vidal who was defended by Pensacola Mayor Henry M. Brackenridge. Callava’s clerk Lt. Sousa refused to turn over the papers, and Jackson had him and Callava arrested. Callava was brought at night before Jackson who refused to let him protest and demanded he hand over the papers. The next day Jackson had them taken from Callava’s house, and Fromentin appealed to Jackson who believed in equality and would not let men of high standing trample on the rights of the weak. Secretary of State Adams once again supported Jackson. Callava was released and went to Washington, where the National Intelligencer published his version of the story. The treaty had given Callava immunity as a foreign agent. Jackson responded by ordering the Spanish officers out of the country.
Jackson promoted cultural events to Americanize Florida that included the Jacksonian Commonwealth Theatre and the Eagle Tavern that offered baths and a bowling alley. A printing press arrived in August followed by a library and reading room with fifty newspapers and periodicals. Jackson made many appointments but none for personal gain, though he urged enterprising men to seek wealth in Florida. William G. D. Worthington aided by Captain John Bell governed what had been East Florida. Jackson insisted on no distinction between rich and poor, and he declared that all freemen had rights including Indians, though he wanted all 3,899 removed from Florida in 1822. He did not consider the tribes sovereign nations there but treated them as dependents. On September 28 War Secretary Calhoun appointed Jackson and Bell as agents to the Seminoles; but Bell was suspended for unbecoming conduct, and after a farewell dinner on October 4 Jackson went home, arriving at Nashville on November 7. Six days later he resigned as Governor, but Monroe did not accept it until December 1.
At home Jackson suffered a breakdown for four months. From a duel in 1806 he had a bullet next to his heart in the left lung that was the there for the rest of his long life, causing a pulmonary abscess and frequent coughing, sometimes bringing up blood. His physician had him treated with lead and mercury, not known to be toxic then. Jackson also took care of other wards, and he was especially proud of Andrew Jackson Donelson who graduated second in his class at West Point in 1820. In a letter to Donelson in May 1822 Jackson advised him to follow his “ideas of right, and Justice, regardless of consequences, always keeping in view principles, not men, the public good.”2 Jackson eventually joined the Presbyterian Church of his mother and wife, and he could be very dogmatic; yet he admired Swedenborg’s concepts of the Deity.
After the war ended in 1815, the British began dumping their accumulated manufactured goods on the American market. The Treaty of Ghent signed in December 1814 also ended most of the West Indian trade to American ships. American manufacturing had expanded during the War of 1812 especially in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, but now their products had to compete with British imports. American exports had increased to $55 million in 1815 and to $84 million in 1816 while British imports went from $16 million to $85 million and then in 1817 to $151 million. US exports to Europe increased to $74 million in 1818 when imports reached $102 million. As European agriculture recovered, falling prices reduced American profits from speculation.
By 1818 the United States had 392 banks, and they could not collect many debts during the depression. Early in 1818 the US Bank realized that they had overextended loans, and then suddenly restricting loans depressed the economy. Philadelphia had thirty business in 1816 that employed 9,672 people, but by 1818 they had laid off 7,500. In July the US Bank had $22,372,000 in liabilities to only $2,357,000 in its specie fund, double the statutory limit of the ratio. Land values fell between 50% and 75%. The debt to the US Government for public lands which had been only $3 million in 1815 grew to $17 million in 1818 and $22 million in 1819.
In 1818 the federal budget of $25.5 million spent $9 million on the War Department, though Calhoun managed to reduce the expense for each enlisted man from $451 per year to $299. Monroe was glad to have $800,000 for constructing fortifications, but the House wanted to reduce the army from 7,421 men to 5,000, and they cut that spending on fortifications to $320,000 and funds for Indian affairs in half. Shortly after becoming a state, the Illinois legislature on 6 February 1819 passed the Apprentice Labor Act to regulate indenture contracts and control abuses.
The total debt on land had risen to $23 million by 1819, and that year 85 of the 392 banks in the US folded. A financial panic swept across the United States as paper currency in state banks depreciated. Prices fell as cotton dropped 50% during the year. Bankruptcies multiplied while the Humane Society kept jailed debtors from starving in Philadelphia. Rich Robert Morris had financed the American Revolution, but now he spent nearly two years in a debtors’ prison. Soup kitchens fed thousands in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. New England’s state banks were more conservative and were not hit as hard, though Boston was the city that suffered the most there. Farmers managed better than city dwellers. Many debtors fled to the west. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Missouri passed debtor-relief laws as did Vermont and Maryland. Every western state passed laws restricting bank charters and credit except Louisiana and Mississippi. Jefferson wrote to John Adams in November that the “paper bubble” had burst, and he struggled to save Monticello. The Society for the Prevention of Pauperism estimated that 15,000 people in New York City needed charity. More than 2,000 shops sold liquor, increasing drunkenness, and the Society tried to keep poor young girls from becoming prostitutes. Youth gangs robbed and sold goods to pawnbrokers.
In 1819 and 1820 the US Treasury transferred federal deposits to state banks that were in danger, but debtors still owed the government $22 million in 1820. The price of government land was lowered to $1.25 per acre to discourage speculation. Some companies secured the 160-acre land warrants given to 18,000 veterans. The Boston and Indiana Land Company owned a high of 29,000 acres and the American Land Company 8,000 acres. In his 1820 pamphlet Thoughts on Political Economy Daniel Raymond urged economists to consider the moral issues regarding labor in order to serve mankind, and he advised the government to help the unemployed and fund public works as did War Secretary Calhoun. In 1819 Emma Willard presented to the New York legislature her “Plan for Improving Female Education,” and she founded Troy Female Seminary in the fall of 1821.
On 3 March 1819 the US Congress offered a reward of $50 for information about slave smuggling, and they authorized the President to deport “illegal slaves” to Africa.
In 1818 Maryland had passed a law taxing all banks that the legislature had not chartered; but cashier James McCullough of the Baltimore branch of the US Bank refused to pay the tax that Maryland tried to impose on the Bank. Daniel Webster, William Pinckney, and William Wirt represented the US Bank. Webster argued that an unlimited tax is a “power to destroy.” On March 6 Chief Justice John Marshall and the US Supreme Court ruled 7-0 in McCulloch v. Maryland that the state law violated the US Constitution and therefore was illegal, calling it “moral chaos.” They declared the US Bank “necessary and proper” because the Constitution gave Congress the power “to lay and collect taxes; to borrow money; to regulate commerce.” Marshall concluded,
The States have no power, by taxation or otherwise,
to retard, impede, burden, or in any manner control,
the operations of the constitutional laws
enacted by Congress to carry into execution
the powers vested in the general government.3
In the 1818 and 1819 elections the Democratic-Republicans increased their advantage in the House of Representatives to 156-27 and in the Senate to 35-7 when they met in December 1819. Treasury Secretary Crawford was a Jeffersonian, and he reduced federal spending to cut down on speculation by nationalists. Governor DeWitt Clinton chartered the Savings Bank of New York that helped finance the Erie Canal.
President Monroe with Calhoun and others visited the south and the west from the end of March 1819 and returned on August 8. Calhoun appointed Major Stephen H. Long of the Corps of Topographical Engineers to lead a scientific expedition that explored the Great Lakes and rivers by steamboat from April that did not break up in Missouri until October 1820.
Maryland had an old law that did not allow Jews to practice law or hold elective offices. In January 1819 Judge Henry M. Brackenridge spoke in favor of a bill to repeal that, and Maryland would give civil rights to Jews in 1825. In May 1819 William Ellery Channing preached that Unitarianism is better than the Trinity doctrine because it affirms the unity of God. Like many liberal theologians he criticized the Calvinist doctrines of original sin, human depravity, and a jealous God who damns many. Instead he held that God is infinitely good, kind to all, and just. He suggested that the best way to preach is to be a pure example by good works.
On 7 December 1819 Monroe sent his annual address to the US Congress recognizing the “derangement” in their “moneyed institutions” that he called a “depression” because it deeply affected commerce and manufacturing. One week later Alabama was admitted as the 22nd state and the 11th slave state. A Relief Party had gained a legislative majority in Kentucky in 1819 and passed reforms to help debtors, ending their imprisonment.
Also in 1819 the US Congress approved $10,000 to educate Indians, and after three years there were 14 schools with more than 500 students. William Underwood in Boston began the nation’s first successful business selling canned food. In June the first steamboat crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and in September the Western Engineer steamboat went up the Missouri River to Council Bluffs.
Secretary of State Adams had a salary of only $3,500 per year while the British foreign secretary Castlereagh earned about $72,000. The State Department’s budget of less than $125,000 a year was only one-tenth that of the British Foreign Office. In 1819 President Monroe persuaded Congress to raise Adams’ salary to $6,000 but with no funds for his family and entertaining guests for which he spent about $11,000.
Dartmouth College had been founded in 1769 to educate youths from Indian tribes. Gradually more local whites became students, and in 1816 the Republican legislature of New Hampshire tried to change the charter and bring back the college’s deposed president, allowing the new Republican Governor William Plumer to appoint trustees and other positions in order to remove the Federalists. Daniel Webster had graduated from Dartmouth, and he defended the college at the US Supreme Court in March 1818. He presented the point made by the Federalist Massachusetts Chief Justice Isaac Parker that people should know that their rights will be protected from the legislature. Webster argued that otherwise the colleges would be subjected to party politics, but instead the college charter should be protected as a contract. US Chief Justice Marshall held that the contract clause from the US Constitution protected corporate charters, and he prevailed 5-1 in Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward on 2 February 1819. This decision would strengthen the power of developing corporations.
The US Supreme Court heard Sturges v. Crowninshield on February 8 and nine days later decided 7-0 that New York’s 1811 insolvency law was unconstitutional because it violated the contracts clause; but Marshall allowed the state to modify the remedy that freed those imprisoned for debt.
Andrew Jackson read newspapers to keep informed on what was happening in American politics, and he blamed the Panic of 1819 on the revelation of the US Bank’s frauds. Crawford and other cabinet officers used their positions to advance their political prospects, and Jackson accused Treasury Secretary Crawford of corruption and hated him for reducing military spending. Treasury and War had become the most corrupt departments, though kickbacks flourished in all departments. Jackson complained that veterans were given paper money worth less, and he opposed banks.
Jackson also criticized Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton for accepting much money from John Jacob Astor and then getting the Senate to reduce War Department spending that used the factory system to provide supplies for Indians because it competed with Astor’s American Fur Company. Astor loaned Monroe $5,000, and then the President rescinded his order that prohibited foreigners from participating in the fur trade. In 1818 Astor cut prices, and he sent traders to sell whiskey in Indian villages.
After the Panic of 1819 the War Department was investigated, but Thomas L. McKenney in Washington’s Republican and Congressional Examiner tried to defend Calhoun whose political chances were damaged by the scandal over the 1818 Yellowstone expedition. Col. Richard M. Johnson and his brother James received more than $100,000 for four steamboats, and three made it only to St. Louis. A clerk’s brother-in-law got a $300,000 contract for supplying stone for Fort Monroe which was dubbed “Castle Calhoun.” Crawford’s friends in the House detailed how private contractors sold overpriced services to the army, but many blamed Crawford for the depression that devastated those in western states. In January 1822 the House got documents from the Treasury Department, and a year later the Washington Republican in an article by “A.B.” accused public printers of suppressing unfavorable government documents. A.B. was Illinois Senator Ninian Edwards, but the other Illinois Senator Jesse B. Thomas used a government-paid excursion to campaign for Crawford. Edwards brought six charges against Crawford in the House. Even Secretary Adams was accused of getting $5,000 from the Florida treaty with Spain to reimburse New England insurance companies.
In 1819 the US Congress granted the American Colonization Society $100,000, and in January 1820 the first emigrants sailed for Liberia. In the next 45 years about 13,000 free blacks would be transported to Africa.
When the Missouri Territory had enough settlers to qualify for statehood, an enabling act was introduced in the US Congress so that voters there could elect a convention to draft a state constitution. On 18 December 1818 House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky renewed Missouri’s petition to form a constitution to become a state. That month the American Convention for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery met in Philadelphia and formed a committee to ask Congress to prohibit slavery in all the territories and new states. The value of a prime field slave had risen from about $450 in 1790 to about $950. On 13 February 1819 New York Representative James Tallmadge proposed an amendment that the importation of more slaves be prohibited and that children of slaves born after Missouri was admitted become free at the age of 25. Missouri had about 10,000 slaves, and Talmadge had suggested the gradual emancipation of slaves in New York which had been adopted in 1817.
In 1819 the southern states had gained 17 seats in the House aided by the rule counting three-fifths of slaves for representation. Clay defended slavery, arguing that “white slaves” in the North were worse off. He owned a dozen slaves then, and they would increase to about 50. He freed several slaves eventually and had 33 at his death. The House approved the Tallmadge amendment in two parts 87-76 and 82-78, the latter with only two votes from the South; but three senators from Illinois and Indiana helped the southern states defeat it 22-16. Congress adjourned on March 3 but took up the Missouri controversy again when they met in December. Senator Jesse Thomas of Illinois had “indentured” workers and had voted for slavery, but he proposed that after Missouri slavery be prohibited from Louisiana Purchase states north of 36° 30′ latitude.
In 1819 Massachusetts had agreed to allow its district of Maine to become a state if they were admitted by 4 March 1820. On January 23 the House had approved the admission of Maine as a free state. Clay gave a 4-hour speech in the House on February 8 arguing that the laws of economics and population would end slavery. He believed that Missouri had the right of self-determination, and he considered slavery a state issue. Clay’s skill and efforts at getting legislation passed and this issue made him recognized as the Great Compromiser. On March 2 the House voted 90-87 to remove the clause banning slavery. They approved the compromise line in the Louisiana Purchase territory 134-42 with 37 southerners voting no. Monroe signed the first part of the Missouri Compromise on March 6.
Maine’s constitution permitted all males to vote and attend school, but in 1821 the legislature banned mixed marriages. In February 1820 the US military had refused to accept Negroes, and on the 6th the Mayflower of Liberia set sail from New York bound for Sierra Leone with 86 free Negroes. British abolitionists had founded that West African nation thirty years earlier. On March 9 the US Congress passed the Land Act which lowered the minimum price for property from $2 an acre to $1.25 and limited tracts to 80 acres, but settlers were not allowed credit. This law helped reduce the debt on public lands from $16,794,795 in 1818 to $10,544,454 in September 1822.
On 22 April 1820 Jefferson in a letter wrote that the momentous Missouri question “like a fire-bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror,” and he hoped for “general emancipation and expatriation.” On May 15 the Congress declared the slave trade, which was illegal since 1808, piracy, permitting the death penalty for slave importers. On July 19 a convention in St. Louis adopted a pro-slavery constitution for Missouri with a clause preventing free Negroes from settling there, though it did not get to the US Congress until November. That month Monroe in his annual address explained that the depression was caused by long and destructive wars in Europe that had ended, and he expected it would not be permanent. He advised people to be economical, frugal, and industrious. New York Senator Rufus King opposed the extension of slavery in new states, and Hezekiah Niles published his speeches on the Missouri bill in December 1819. Early in 1820 delegates from nine western and northeastern states met in the Convention of Friends of Domestic Industry in New York to make protection an electoral issue.
The 1820 census found there were 9,638,453 people in the United States including 1,538,038 slaves, but Indians were not counted. The population of the ten southern states was 4,298,199 including 1,496,189 slaves and 116,915 free Negroes. More than 19,000 slaves lived north of the Mason-Dixon line with New York having over 10,000. Some 72% of Americans worked in agriculture, and about 90% of the Negroes were slaves. Missouri had a population of 66,586 with about 10,000 slaves. The population of New York City was 123,706 followed by Philadelphia with 63,802, Baltimore 62,738, Boston 43,298, New Orleans 27,176, and Charleston 24,780. Only 5% of the people in the US lived in towns with populations over 8,000.
Clay, whose salary of $6,000 was twice that of other congressmen, resigned as Speaker in October because he needed to earn money to pay off debts. The House had 22 ballots before John W. Taylor of New York was elected Speaker. Clay had borrowed $20,000 from John Jacob Astor and agreed to pay it with interest by August 1822. He became the chief counsel for the United States Bank in Ohio and Kentucky and rebuilt his successful law practice in Lexington.
On December 22 Daniel Webster gave an oration commemorating the bicentennial of Plymouth Rock in which he declared they must put an end to odious and abominable slavery, and he urged his listeners to pledge themselves “to extirpate and destroy it.”
Also in 1820 New York and New Hampshire became the first states to fund public libraries. Lutheran churches formed a General Synod. White property owners began electing the mayor of Washington DC. The territorial government of Arkansas made a treaty that gave much western land to the Cherokees, and whites who intruded were expelled. President Monroe was re-elected by the Electoral College with all but one vote which went to his independent adversary John Quincy Adams. Vice President Tompkins was also re-elected, and the cabinet stayed the same.
John Quincy Adams was elected president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Bible Society which he accepted because of his interest in the views of Unitarians and his opposition to fundamentalist evangelicals. On 2 March 1820 he wrote in his Memoirs,
It is among the evils of slavery
that it taints the very sources of moral principle….
The impression produced upon my mind
by the progress of this discussion is,
that the bargain between freedom and slavery
contained in the Constitution of the United States
is morally and politically vicious,
inconsistent with the principles
upon which alone our Revolution can be justified;
cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery,
by pledging the faith of freedom
to maintain and perpetuate the tyranny of the master;
and grossly unequal and impolitic,
by admitting that slaves are
at once enemies to be kept in subjection,
property to be secured or restored to their owners,
and persons not to be represented themselves,
but for whom their masters are privileged
with nearly a double share of representation.
The consequence has been that
this slave representation has governed the Union….
I have favored this Missouri Compromise, believing it to be
all that could be effected under the present Constitution,
and from extreme unwillingness to put the Union at hazard.
But perhaps it would have been a wiser
as well as a bolder course
to have persisted in the restriction upon Missouri,
till it should have terminated in a convention
of the States to revise and amend the Constitution.
This would have produced a new Union
of thirteen or fourteen states unpolluted with slavery,
with a great and glorious object to effect, namely,
that of rallying to their standard the other States
by the universal emancipation of their slaves.
If the Union must be dissolved slavery is precisely
the question upon which it ought to break.4
In early 1821 the Congress passed Crawford’s Relief Act, and by September 1822 the debts of western buyers had been cut in half. On 17 January 1821 Mexico allowed Moses Austin a grant of 200,000 acres to settle 300 families in Texas. In February the Congress approved the Treasury extending debt payments and offering a 37.5% discount to debtors who paid promptly. The US Senate agreed on February 28 to the second Missouri Compromise, which Henry Clay managed to work out in committee so that free blacks would not be prohibited in Missouri. He was given credit for Missouri becoming the 24th state and the 12th that allowed slavery. As Clay retired from Congress, he declared that Monroe now had no influence on Congress in spite of his nearly unanimous re-election.
On March 3 the US Supreme Court re-affirmed that federal courts could overrule state courts in Cohens v. Virginia. In Monroe’s second inaugural address on March 5 he asked for completion of his coastal defenses. He noted they had paid down the national debt, but now they were borrowing because of the depression. He wanted support for civil governments and education of the Indian tribes. Others believed that Indians should be treated as nations so that they could cede away their land.
On April 15 Monroe appointed as governor of the Florida territory Andrew Jackson, who in May accepted and retired from the army. John Q. Adams in his speech to Congress on July 4 warned that the US was becoming a colonial power, and he urged continuation of their neutrality policy and respect for the independence of other nations. The Missouri legislature accepted statehood on August 10. On September 4 Russia’s Tsar Alexander I extended his territorial claims in Alaska from 55° latitude south to 51° and prohibited foreign ships from coming within 100 miles of that territory.
Also in 1821 the first well to produce natural gas occurred in Fredonia, New York. Franklin Academy in Columbus became the first public school in Mississippi. Alabama set up a patrol system to stop slaves from escaping. The African Company became New York’s first black theater troupe. The Saturday Evening Post was begun and would become the most popular weekly magazine in America. French fur traders led by Francois Chouteau started a trading post where the Kansas and Missouri rivers meet. David Crockett, known for claiming he killed 105 bears in seven months, was elected to the Tennessee legislature at the age of 34. Massachusetts had established the first free public high school in 1821, and in 1827 they mandated that every town with more than 50 families provide teachers. Josiah Holbrook founded the first Lyceum in the US in 1826, and soon fifteen states had lyceums for adult education. Membership was $2 per year or $20 for life. Youths under 18 could join for $1 a year.
John Q. Adams spent four years working on his long and comprehensive Report of the Secretary of State Upon Weights and Measures to the Congress on the French metric system which Jefferson and Madison had supported; but neither house even discussed the system which Adams hoped would be the standard for the whole world.
In January 1822 the Nashville Gazette endorsed Andrew Jackson for the presidency, and on July 20 the Tennessee Legislature nominated him as a favorite son. Finally on March 8 President Monroe wrote to the US Congress recommending the recognition of the United Provinces of Rio de la Plata, Gran Colombia, Chile, Peru, and Mexico, and on the 20th the House voted for that resolution 167-1, appropriating $100,000 for those missions on 4 May 1822. Yet Austria, France, Prussia, and Russia would agree in November to support Spain’s efforts to regain its colonies. The United States then recognized Colombia on June 17, Buenos Aires, Chile, and Mexico in January 1823, Brazil on 26 May 1824, the Federation of Central America on 4 August 1824, and Peru on 2 May 1826.
The road from Cumberland, Maryland had begun construction in 1811 and had completed its first section in 1818, but President Monroe vetoed federal funds for the highway. On 19 June 1822 an envoy from Gran Colombia, which included Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Panama, arrived in Washington, and President Monroe affirmed their independence. In the fall Stephen F. Austin established the first American settlement along the San Antonio River in Texas on the 200,000 acres he inherited from his father Moses. California became a part of free Mexico on November 29, and on December 12 the US formally recognized the revolutionary government of Mexico led by Augustin de Iturbide.
Denmark Vesey had bought his freedom in 1799 and organized a revolt in Charleston, South Carolina, but it was discovered and suppressed in June 1822. Denmark and 34 others were hanged, and 43 were sold or transported.
John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company had caused trading posts to close down in 1821, and the next year the US Congress ended the government factor system that regulated Indian trade. Astor extended his operations in the West.
The Driftless Area of northwestern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin was found to have much lead and other minerals. Col. James A. Johnson of Kentucky brought miners and 150 slaves with supplies that started a mining rush that led to 10,000 frontiersmen staking out claims by 1830, building the town of Galena by the Fever River, and shipping 15 million pounds of lead annually to New Orleans.
Also in 1822 William Church invented a mechanical typesetter. Yale College officials prohibited an early form of football. The first College of Pharmacy was started in Philadelphia. William Duane was influenced by Pestalozzi and in July urged reforms in Pennsylvania’s common schools. During a yellow fever epidemic thousands fled from New York City to Greenwich Village. Cotton mills in Massachusetts began the use of water power. Matthew Carey published his Essays on Political Economy promoting protective tariffs. Clay was a prominent leader in the American Colonization Society which purchased land in Liberia and named Rev. Jehudi to lead the free blacks from America to found a colony there. Many Negroes and abolitionists working for emancipation and education opposed colonization. Monroe vetoed a bill to collect tolls on the National Road because he considered that it was unconstitutional.
On 23 January 1823 the United States recognized the independence of Argentina and Chile. Adams and Clay agreed on liberty everywhere and intervention nowhere. Clay acted as a commissioner to work out a settlement in a dispute between Kentucky and Virginia in 1822, but the Virginia legislature rejected it. Clay argued unsuccessfully for Kentucky’s case in February 1823 before the US Supreme Court which ruled in Green v. Biddle that a contract between two states is valid. When the French invaded Spain in April, rumors that Cuba or Puerto Rico might be taken over by France or Britain persuaded Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to write on the 28th to the new US Minister to Spain Hugh Nelson, warning that the US would object to Spain transferring “Cuba to any other power.”
The American Theater in New Orleans used gas lighting in May. That month an article in the New York Mechanics’ Gazette criticized using punitive methods more than rehabilitation. Giving prisoners work to do was a reform, but craftsmen, mechanics, and others were concerned what that unpaid labor would do to their wages. In 1821 the Louisiana legislature commissioned Edward Livingston to apply preventative and reformative methods to criminal laws, and he created an 8-volume code in 1825. In October 1823 the North American Review reported that Livingston argued,
If you make the spectacle of the infliction of death common,
it debases and brutalizes the public sentiment;
if you make it rare, it converts the criminal into a martyr;
and, in either alternative, does more evil than good.5
The state of Mississippi outlawed gatherings of five or more Negroes, and the government prohibited teaching them to read or write. Samuel R. Hall in Concord, Vermont founded the first teachers’ school in the US. The US Congress required regulation of mail sent on steamers. The American Tract Society began publishing religious and ethical pamphlets and magazines.
On 17 July 1823 Secretary of State Adams gave the Russian minister de Tuyll a note warning not to colonize Oregon. By the end of August the French army had restored King Fernando VII in Spain. On August 16 British Foreign Minister George Canning made an offer to US Ambassador Richard Rush that the two nations condemn any effort by European powers to revive Spain’s dominion, and Adams received the dispatches from London on October 9. Monroe wrote to the ex-presidents Jefferson and Madison for their views on the British proposal, and Jefferson in November urged acceptance, writing,
She now offers to lead, aid, and accompany us in it.
By acceding to her proposition,
we detach her from the bands,
bring her mighty weight into the scale of free government,
and emancipate a continent at one stroke,
which might otherwise linger long in doubt and difficulty.
Great Britain is the nation which
can do us the most harm of any one or all on earth;
and with her on our side we need not fear the world.6
Although both Jefferson and Madison encouraged Monroe to accept the offer, after discussing it with his cabinet the President agreed with Adams not to accept the joint action. They informed the British of this but asked them to recognize the Latin American republics. After the British and Americans protested the Russians’ closing the Pacific coast they claimed in 1821, Tsar Alexander withdrew the prohibition. Canning in October persuaded the French ambassador Jules Polignac to renounce the intention of annexing any Spanish colony in America, but he did not announce this until March 1824. Adams in November 1823 drafted a response to the Russian Minister de Tuyll with a paragraph that Wirt advised Monroe to reject. After he informed Adams that he accepted it reluctantly, Adams left it out in his statement to Baron de Tuyll on November 27. I include that disregarded paragraph here for its wisdom:
The principles of this form of Polity are:
1 that the Institution of Government, to be lawful,
must be pacific, that is founded upon the consent,
and by the agreement of those who are governed;
and 2 that each Nation is exclusively
the judge of the Government best suited to itself,
and that no Nation, can justly interfere by force
to impose a different Government upon it.
The first of these principles may be designated,
as the principle of Liberty—
the second as the principle of National Independence—
They are both Principles of Peace and of Good Will to Man.7
On 2 December 1823 President Monroe announced his policy toward Latin America and European involvement which after 1850 came to be known as the “Monroe Doctrine.” His main points were that the US considered North and South America no longer subject to colonization by Europeans, that the US would consider European intervention there as “dangerous to our peace and safety, and that the US would not interfere with European concerns or intervene in their wars. In this annual message to Congress he wrote,
The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments
the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness
of their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic.
In the wars of the European powers in matters
relating to themselves we have never taken any part,
nor does it comport with our policy to do so.
It is only when our rights are invaded
or seriously menaced that we resent injuries
or make preparation for our defense.
With the movements in this hemisphere
we are of necessity more immediately connected,
and by causes which must be obvious
to all enlightened and impartial observers.
The political system of the allied powers
is essentially different in this respect from that of America.
This difference proceeds from that
which exists in their respective Governments;
and to the defense of our own, which has been achieved
by the loss of so much blood and treasure,
and matured by the wisdom
of their most enlightened citizens,
and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity,
this whole nation is devoted.
We owe it, therefore, to candor
and to the amicable relations existing between
the United States and those powers to declare that
we should consider any attempt on their part
to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere
as dangerous to our peace and safety.
With the existing colonies or dependencies
of any European power
we have not interfered and shall not interfere.
But with the Governments who have declared
their independence and maintain it,
and whose independence we have,
on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition
for the purpose of oppressing them,
or controlling in any other manner their destiny,
by any European power in any other light than
as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition
toward the United States.
In the war between those new Governments and Spain
we declared our neutrality at the time of their recognition,
and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to adhere,
provided no change shall occur which,
in the judgement of the competent authorities
of this Government, shall make a corresponding change
on the part of the United States
indispensable to their security.8
President Monroe declined to support the recent Greek independence, though many in Congress including Daniel Webster urged him to do so. On 25 May 1821 the Messenian Senate led by Petros Mavromichalis had sent a request to the citizens of the United States of America for help and support for the liberty, and in October 1823 Edward Everett in the North American Review published his reply to their appeal. Monroe sent his last annual message to Congress on December 6. Two days later Senator Webster introduced a resolution to support the Greek Revolution which he defended on 19 January 1824. The next day John Randolph of Roanoke argued against what he called a “moral crusade.”
In 1823 Charles Jared Ingersoll gave his Discourse Concerning the Influence of America on the Mind as the Annual Oration of the American Philosophical Society. He said,
By the Constitution of the United States
it is the duty of government to promote
the progress of science and the useful arts.
Not one of the eleven new States has been admitted
into the Union without provision in its constitution
for schools, academies, colleges, and universities.9
He noted that the United States had more than a half million students in public schools, 10,000 physicians, and medical colleges in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio. He concluded his address,
Let our intellectual motto be, that naught is done
while aught remains to be done,
and our study to prove to the world, that the best patronage
of religion, science, literature, and the arts,
of whatever the mind can achieve, is SELF-GOVERNMENT.10
Henry Clay was nominated as a presidential candidate by Missouri and Kentucky in November 1822 and by Ohio in January 1823. He went after New York and Virginia and labeled Pennsylvania the “keystone state.” The House of Representatives elected him Speaker again on December 1, and on 14 January 1824 he gave a speech explaining his “American system” which included the government regulating commerce and constructing canals. On February 10 the US Congress approved the General Survey Bill authorizing $30,000 for surveys and canals. President Monroe signed the bill after he got an opinion from Supreme Court Justice William Johnson that funding internal improvements is constitutional. Daniel Webster argued in Gibbons v. Ogden that the state of New York had no right to charter a monopoly because the national government has the power to regulate interstate commerce and so should be able to overrule conflicting legislation by states. The US Supreme Court led by John Marshall agreed 6-0 on March 2.
War Secretary Calhoun began the Bureau of Indian Affairs on March 11. On the 13th the Anglo-American Convention to suppress the slave trade was signed. On the 22nd at Fall Creek, Indiana a white jury convicted four men of murdering nine Indians, and they were the first whites executed in the US for killing an Indian.
On March 31 Henry Clay, hoping to get votes from manufacturing states, argued in favor of the first protective tariff bill that increased the tax from 20% to more than 30%. He noted that in the last 20 years the population had increased 120% but American exports only 16%. He argued that since the European wars had ended in 1815, they no longer needed American trade and that caused an American trade deficit and unemployment. He suggested that they could create a “home market” to consume American manufactured goods. He argued that American industry could also provide cheaper materials for the South and that a protective tariff would stabilize the home market. The American System with tariffs, internal improvements, and central banking could protect industry and manufacturing from European competition while allowing free trade and reciprocity in the western hemisphere. Senator Daniel Webster opposed the bill, and on the first two days of April he gave his famous speech on free trade. The bill passed and became law on May 22. From 1817 through 1833 tariffs would provide the federal government with an average of 86% of its revenues. The South opposed the tariffs, but the vote in 1824 showed that the western states had voting power in helping to pass tariffs.
The US and Russia settled their dispute on April 17 making the border 54° 40’. American ships were allowed within the 100-mile limit, which the Tsar had previously excluded, and now they could even enter rivers that flow into the Pacific. On May 24 the President signed a bill that directed the US Army Corps of Engineers to construct civil projects including harbors and dams. The next day the American Sunday School Union began organizing Sunday Schools nationwide. In June the Supreme Court of Virginia upheld an 1823 act in the Aldridge case that allowed a free man of color convicted of larceny to be punished by 39 stripes and be sold into slavery.
The Workingman’s Gazette was founded in October 1824. That month a mob of over 400 whites attacked Negroes in the Hard Scrabble waterfront district of Providence, Rhode Island; four whites were arrested but were not punished. In November a petition written by Abraham Moise and signed by 47 members of the Beth Elohim Congregation was aimed at reforming Orthodox Judaism so that they would not be “slaves of bigotry and priestcraft.” Influenced by reformed Jews in Holland, Germany, and Prussia, they wanted weekly sermons and prayers in English.
Also in 1824 the industrial action by 202 women weavers at Pawtucket, Rhode Island was the first female strike in the US. The state of Missouri passed a law allowing slaves to sue for their freedom while the Ohio Assembly favored African colonization by emancipated slaves. German immigrants brought gymnastics to America. During a visit by Lafayette and his son the US Congress granted them $200,000 and 23,040 acres in the West for a town. The breed of Saxony Merino sheep was introduced into New England, and sheep farming spread quickly in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont.
Monroe made his last annual address to Congress on December 7, noting that during his presidency he had reduced the national debt by $37 million. He also discussed what could be done to resolve the conflicts with the native tribes. The Congress approved $150,000 for a road from Wheeling to Zanesville, and Monroe signed it on his last day in office. He also signed the bill authorizing $300,000 for the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal Company. He believed that the government owed him money and asked for an investigation. After that he asked for $53,836 including principle and interest, but in 1826 the Congress granted him only $29,513. Monroe died on July 4 in 1831.
As early as January 1822 William Duane’s Aurora began suggesting Andrew Jackson for the presidency. On July 20 the Tennessee General Assembly submitted Jackson for election by the people of the US. In June and July 1823 the Philadelphia Columbian Observer published The Letters of Wyoming, and they were reprinted as a pamphlet in 1824. The anonymous author was Jackson’s friend John H. Eaton, and they expressed Jackson’s concern about the corruption and need for virtuous patriots. On 1 October 1822 the Tennessee legislature elected Jackson to the US Senate, and on November 1 the Niles’ Weekly Register noted that the Tennessee General Assembly was abandoning the caucus system used for nominating presidential candidates by the Congress and replacing it with Felix Grundy’s proposal for the people in districts choosing electors to vote for President and Vice President. In October a convention in Philadelphia had resolved to support Jackson, but at the Pennsylvania nominating convention in November 1823 New-Schoolers promoting Calhoun managed to postpone the nomination for a year. Jackson became friends with his rival Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, but his brother Jesse Benton, who had been humiliated in a duel with Jackson, published in Nashville An Address on the Presidential Question which attacked Jackson.
Three of the five main candidates were in Monroe’s cabinet, and the President remained neutral. All five were in the dominant Republican party. Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford was born in Virginia but lived mostly in Georgia, and he was supported by Jefferson and Madison as well as by Martin Van Buren of New York. Crawford tried to get his friends in Congress to form a caucus to give him the nomination of the only political party. On 14 February 1824 only 68 of the 261 Congressmen showed up for the caucus, and 64 voted to nominate Crawford; but when the vote was announced, the packed gallery groaned.
War Secretary Calhoun of South Carolina favored strong defense and tariffs. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was backed by New England and most of New York. House Speaker Henry Clay of Kentucky represented the West. Calhoun, Adams, and Clay were economic nationalists. In the fall of 1823 Crawford had suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed, and he tried to keep it secret; but after his stroke Jackson considered his continuing campaign absurd. General Andrew Jackson of Tennessee was called “Old Hickory,” and supporters formed Hickory Clubs. Those wanting an Adams-Jackson “People’s Ticket” said, “John Quincy Adams who can write and Andrew Jackson who can fight.” After a Harrisburg convention supported Jackson in April 1824, Calhoun withdrew and agreed to be Vice President under Jackson. Adams also accepted him as a running mate, and Calhoun was easily elected Vice President; but his salary of $1,000 was less than he had earned as War Secretary. On July 4 Jackson wrote that the national debt was a curse, and he promised as President to pay it off in order to prevent the wealthy aristocrats from destroying liberty.
Monroe had been unopposed in the 1820 election when about 100,000 men voted; but with more direct elections 365,833 votes were cast in 1824. The four candidates for President received the following number of popular votes in all states, including six where only the legislatures’ votes counted, and got (electoral college votes): Jackson 151,271 (99), Adams 113,122 (84), Crawford 40,856 (41), and Clay 47,531 (37). If three-fifths of slaves had not been counted toward representation, Jackson would have gotten only 77 electoral college votes to Adams’ 83. Crawford won Virginia and Georgia, and Clay won Kentucky and Ohio. For the only time in US history the 12th amendment went into effect which had the House of Representatives with each state getting one vote elect the President from the top three candidates in the electoral college vote. Although Jackson had won in Maryland, Illinois, and Louisiana, Adams persuaded their delegations to vote for him. Animosity between Jackson and Crawford worked against Jackson, though his followers would become the Democratic Party. The nationalist Republicans would develop into the Whig Party. Clay warned that electing General Jackson would stimulate the “military spirit” and could have “pernicious results.” He persuaded those in states he had won to vote for Adams even though most Kentuckians preferred Jackson. Thus on February 9 Adams won a majority with 13 states to 7 for Jackson and 4 for Crawford. After Adams appointed Clay the Secretary of State five days later, Jackson and his followers accused them of corruption. In that office Clay would earn $12,699 a year, and he gave up his position with the US Bank.
On 3 January 1825 British factory owner Robert Owen purchased 20,000 acres by the Wabash River for $125,000 from George Rapp who had begun the Harmony Society in 1814. Owen and his son founded the New Harmony community in Pennsylvania that included educating children, moral lectures, and social activities, but no religious worship. They shared property and enjoyed equal rights. Men and women formed relationships without marriage ceremonies and dissolved them without divorce proceedings. As he ran out of money, Owen had to turn people away. His socialist community broke up in March 1827, but it influenced fifteen other Owenite communitarian experiments.
Philip Lindsley taught at Cumberland College in Tennessee, and in an address in January 1825 he began by suggesting that a free government cannot be maintained except by an enlightened and virtuous people. He observed that education extends the desire and demand for more learning.
John Quincy Adams was strongly influenced by Cicero and enlightenment philosophers. He was fluent in seven languages and had translated Christoph Martin Wieland’s romance Oberon from German. In his inaugural address on 4 March 1825 Adams promised to respect the rights of state governments as an “inviolable duty,” and he hoped that “every state will feel its own obligation to respect and preserve the rights of the whole.” Among other purposes he intended “to extend equal protection to all the great interests of the nation; to promote the civilization of the Indian tribes; and to proceed in the great system of internal improvements within the limits of the constitutional power of the Union.”10 After the speech the Federalist Chief Justice Marshall administered the oath of office.
On February 21 President Adams had chosen Senator James Barbour, the former Governor of Virginia, to be Secretary of War, and he kept on another Virginian Wirt as Attorney General. The new Treasury Secretary Richard Rush was from Pennsylvania. Ohio judge John McLean remained as Postmaster General, and he hired Major Henry Lee who wrote editorials critical of Adams and Clay for the Washington Gazette. John W. Taylor of New York again replaced Clay as Speaker of the House. The Congress was dominated by the supporters of Jackson, Crawford, and Calhoun, and the Republicans were wary of Adams’ revival of the federalism and Nationalism of President Washington. Adams pleased the Federalists by appointing Rufus King as minister to Britain. Before leaving, King presented a plan for African colonization funded by selling western land. The Ohio legislature had passed a more comprehensive plan in January 1824, and in 1825 this was supported by seven more free states and Delaware; but six southern states condemned it as interfering with slavery. They preferred westward expansion to spread slavery there rather than the expense of sending them to Africa.
With buildings designed by Thomas Jefferson the University of Virginia began offering classes in March. In April journeymen carpenters went on strike in Boston complaining that they could not maintain a family on their current wages, but they were opposed by the master carpenters and the builders. On May 10 Secretary of State Clay sent a note to Henry Middleton asking him to urge Tsar Alexander to persuade Spain to make peace with the new republics in America. This was soon followed by similar appeals sent to the ministers of Britain and France. The British West Indies had opened trade to American ships in 1824, but in June 1825 they prohibited US trade. In July some liberals from the Congregational Church inspired by the sermons of William Ellery Channing founded the American Unitarian Association.
On October 25 the 363-mile Erie Canal with 83 locks was completed enabling ships to go from New York harbor by the Hudson River and the canal to Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo by Lake Erie. In a generation those cities would multiply their populations by more than ten times as trade improved their lives. General Simon Perkins founded the town of Akron in Ohio at the highest point of an Erie and Ohio canal. John Shulze had been elected Governor of Pennsylvania in 1823 with 58% of the votes. After approving canals and the state’s first railroad he was re-elected in 1827 with 97%.
In October the Tennessee legislature unanimously nominated Andrew Jackson for the presidency in 1828. Samuel F. B. Morse and other frustrated artists from the Academy of Arts in November formed the New York Drawing Association which was renamed the National Academy of Design in 1828.
On 6 December 1825 in his first annual message to Congress President Adams declared that “liberty is power” and that “the spirit of improvement is abroad on the earth.” He asked for funds to support his national projects and internal improvements especially roads and canals. He wanted to promote
improvement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures,
the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic
and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature,
and the progress of the sciences.11
Attorney General Wirt called the speech “excessively bold” and a “spirited thing,” but he “dreaded” its effect on his popularity. Many newspapers criticized Adams’ policies and warned against desecrating the Constitution. Not all of the improvement projects were unpopular. A second national road was to ease travel between Washington and New Orleans.
On December 20 Clay sent notes to Mexico and Colombia asking them to suspend their plans for taking Cuba. Treasury Secretary Richard Rush, son of Benjamin, wrote in his December 1825 Report on the State of the Finances, “By a flourishing state of manufactures we shall see rising up a new class of capitalists.”12 In four years the J. Q. Adams administration would reduce the national debt by $25 million.
The United States agreed to a commercial treaty with the five nations of the Central American Federation on December 25. The next day Adams informed Congress that the liberator Simón Bolívar had called for a Congress of American Nations to meet in Panama in 1826, and he nominated Richard Anderson and John Sergeant to attend. Congress did not confirm their nominations until 14 March 1826, and the House appropriated $40,000 for this mission on April 22. Adams and Clay prepared instructions for good neighbor treaties by May 8. However, Sergeant feared summer pestilence in Panama and resigned, and Anderson caught a tropical fever and died at Cartagena on July 24.
Vice President Calhoun as president of the Senate appointed its committee members. Adams urged South Carolina to end preventive detention of visiting Negro sailors. In 1825 cotton prices fell from 32 cents to 13 cents, and South Carolina’s legislature condemned internal improvements and protective tariffs as unconstitutional. Calhoun spent seven months in his home state of South Carolina and gave up his nationalism for states’ rights. In 1826 he began debating against the administration in newspapers.
The Jacksonian Edward Livingston completed the 8-volume penal code for the Louisiana legislature. Schools in the US began using John Pierpont’s Readers. Daniel Hewett’s The American Traveler was published as a guidebook. Tin cans were invented in England, and Thomas Kensett gained a patent for them in the US. Fur traders Kit Carson and Jim Bridger set up posts in Colorado. Deming Jarves began producing mechanically pressed glass in Massachusetts. Thomas Tredgold published a treatise on railroad engineering, and John Stevens invented the steam locomotive in Hoboken, New Jersey. Henry Deringer designed a small, single-bore pistol.
On February 13 the American Society for the Promotion of Temperance was founded by 16 evangelical men in Boston. Manufacturers of shoes and leather goods with clergy and lawyers in Lynn started the Society for the Promotion of Industry, Frugality, and Temperance. Within five years the American Temperance Society would have 2,220 chapters and 170,000 members pledged not to drink alcohol, and in ten years 8,000 groups with 1,250,000 members
On 30 March 1826 Virginia Senator John Randolph accused Adams and Clay of making a “corrupt bargain” to make Adams president. Clay had renounced duels to support Lyman Beecher’s effort to ban them; but even though he was a poor shot, he challenged Randolph. On April 8 both men shot twice; Randolph shot at and missed Clay’s legs and in the air, and Clay missed and then only put a hole in Randolph’s coat.
On April 26 the US signed a treaty of friendship, trade, and navigation with Denmark, and on May 2 the US recognized the republic of Peru. Clay signed reciprocal or most-favored-nation commercial agreements with Mexico in 1826, other Scandinavian nations and Hanseatic cities in 1827, and Prussia and Austria in 1828.
Americans were amazed to learn that Thomas Jefferson in Virginia and John Adams in Massachusetts had both died on July 4, and on August 2 Daniel Webster delivered a famous eulogy in Boston to the two founding fathers. David Crockett was elected to the US Congress from Tennessee.
In the fall Haden Edwards in Texas tried to remove squatting Americans and Mexicans from his Mexican land grant, and the Mexican government expelled him. He gathered some men together, and with a red-and-white flag they declared independence as the Republic of Fredonia on December 16. He and his brother Benjamin hoped for American support; but Stephen Austin led 275 men from his colony’s militia, and with the support of a hundred Mexican soldiers they ended that Texas rebellion against Mexican authority on 31 January 1827.
George Washington, Ben Franklin, and eleven others in the Constitutional Convention had been Freemasons, and the number of lodges increased from 327 in 1810 to 525 in 1820. William Morgan published the secrets of Freemasonry in his Illustrations of Masonry by One of the Fraternity Who Has Devoted Thirty Years to the Subject, but on 11 September 1826 he was put in jail in Batavia, New York for an alleged $2 debt. The next day his bail was paid, and strangers forced him into a carriage. On 7 October 1827 a drowned and decomposed body was found that his widow and a dentist identified as Morgan’s. This incident turned many people against the Masons, and in the next ten years hundreds of lodges closed. Anti-Masons formed the first third party in the US and nominated candidates in 1827 legislative elections including 15 in New York which soon had 32 Anti-Masonic newspapers.
Albert Gallatin replaced Rufus King in Britain in June, and they signed a trade agreement on November 13. In the northwest the US and Britain shared territory around the Columbia River. At a meeting on December 19 King argued that the principle of contiguity allowed people to claim land adjacent to settled territory.
Anne Royall (1769-1854) has been called the first female American journalist. She traveled and edited a small Washington newspaper. In 1826 she published her Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States and in 1827 her novel The Tennessean. She was known for scolding women going to the Presbyterian church and denounced many churches. She was once tried for her unpopular activity and was convicted, but fellow journalists paid her fine.
New York Senator Martin Van Buren and Vice President Calhoun met in the Virginia home of William H. Fitzhugh in December, and they agreed to work together to elect Jackson president in 1828. On 13 January 1827 Van Buren wrote a letter to Richmond Enquirer editor Thomas Ritchie about a new Democratic party to revive the Jeffersonian coalition that would include southern planters and northern Republicans.
John Russwurm was the first Negro to graduate from Bowdoin College, and in March 1827 he and Samuel Cornish began publishing the first Negro newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, for an estimated “500,000 free persons of color.” The Journal on August 10 published an anonymous letter by a woman asking for female education. In 1829 Russwurm moved to Liberia where he worked as secretary for the American Colonization Society from 1830 to 1834.
On 2 February 1827 the US Supreme Court ruled 7-0 in Martin v. Mott that the President can mobilize state militias in the national interest. On the 28th Vice President Calhoun broke a tie in the Senate to reject a 50% tariff on wool. Andrew Stevenson of Virginia was elected Speaker of the House 104-95.
In the Michigan Territory the rising price of lead attracted miners. Winnebagos were accused of murdering two white families in 1826, and in June 1827 some white boatmen abducted and raped seven Winnebago women.
South Carolina College’s President Thomas Cooper warned that protective tariffs favored northern industry at the expense of the agricultural south on July 2. On the 30th after an anti-tariff rally at Columbia, South Carolina the Pennsylvania Society led by protectionist Matthew Carey sponsored a national convention with a hundred delegates from 13 states in Harrisburg to urge rising tariffs. Pennsylvanians wanted their pig iron and rolled iron protected. New England had hundreds of mills and factories. Providence, Rhode Island had 30,000 people working in 150 factories and claimed to be richest city of its size; but many Americans believed that factories undermined morals and impoverished workers. In five years the number of those working in factories multiplied by ten to two million people.
On September 19 Jim Bowie in a duel on a sandbar in the Mississippi River used his new knife to kill Major Morris Wright after he wounded Bowie with his sword. In October in Massachusetts the Methodist Salome Lincoln became the first American woman to begin a lecture tour.
After carpenters went on strike in June at Philadelphia to demand a ten-hour day with no reduction in pay, William Heighton organized skilled journeymen as the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations in October.
The 20th US Congress convened on December 13 with a Jacksonian majority of Democratic-Republicans in both houses. On the 29th Clay published a 61-page address to refute charges Jackson made against him after the 1824 election.
Also in 1827 Sam Houston was elected Governor of Tennessee. After Thomas Jefferson died in debt, the Louisiana legislature approved $10,000 for his family. Massachusetts passed the first law to establish secondary schools in every town with fifty or more families providing teachers with good morals to instruct children. Joseph Dixon started the first US lead-pencil factory in Salem, Massachusetts. In Cincinnati the anarchist philosopher Josiah Warren started a Time Store trading goods for equivalent work. Daniel Webster argued 16 cases before the US Supreme Court in 1827 and 249 during his career.
In the summer the Niles’ Register advocated another protective tariff, and on 31 January 1828 Van Buren and Silas Wright of New York and James Buchanan of Pennsylvania introduced tariffs to punish New England and help the South, assuming they would fail; but on May 19 both houses of Congress passed the “Tariff of Abominations” which put about a 40% tax on 92% of imported goods such as manufactured textiles, glass, and ironware as well as on wool, hemp, and shipbuilding materials. The wool tariff helped sheep-raisers like Van Buren. The House passed the bill without amendments, but the Senate amended it to please New England. The bill was designed to make President Adams look like he was against protectionism, but he signed the amended bill. Jacksonians designed the bill to help them get votes from the swing states while ignoring the concerns of the Jacksonian South and Adams’ New England. Five days later Congress passed the Reciprocity Act to eliminate duties that discriminated against goods from cooperative nations.
Jedediah Smith led the first overland expedition to reach Oregon, but reports said that Umpqua Indians on July 14 killed 15 or 18, though Smith escaped into the woods.
In April after twenty years of work Noah Webster (1758-1843) published The American Dictionary of the English Language with 38,000 entries. Webster’s Spelling Book was used in most schools.
Groundbreaking on July 4 initiated building of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. On October 16 the Delaware and Hudson Canal started transporting anthracite coal from Pennsylvania to industry in the East. William Heighton organized the Mechanics Union of Trade Associations (MUTA) in 1827 and the Working Men’s Party before editing the Mechanics’ Free Press which began publishing in July 1828. They reported the first factory strike in Paterson, New Jersey which was provoked by changing the lunch hour from 12 to 1 and led to violence with the militia. Heighton and other workers became Universalists who criticized evangelicals for emphasizing sin. In November an anonymous article by “Candidus” complained about masters using unpaid apprentices, beginning and ending thus:
The practice of many master mechanics in this city,
in employing none but apprentices
in their manufacturing establishments, is an evil
severely felt by the journeymen of all denominations;
for whenever there is a greater number of mechanics
than the demand of labor requires,
it is evident the surplus must be thrown out of employ….
If all were master mechanics, there would be
no more labor performed than there is at present;
but there would be a more equal distribution
of the profits of that labor among the members of society,
and consequently would destroy
the powerful influence of monopolists.13
Farming in South Carolina was suffering from soil exhaustion from cotton, and many there believed that high tariffs damaged their economy. John C. Calhoun wrote “The South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” arguing that the abominable tariff was unconstitutional because protectionism favors special interests. The South Carolina legislature on December 19 declared the state’s right to nullify an act of the national government. Calhoun complained that southerners had to pay to protect northern manufacturing against foreign competition even though that made them less able to compete in the world market. He contended that the tariff was unconstitutional because it subsidized manufacturing at the expense of commerce and agriculture. He argued that the constitutional remedy was for the states to have the right to interpose to protect their reserved powers. He noted that this nullification did not suspend the national law except in the state protesting, and he argued that the Constitution would have to be amended by three-quarters of the states to overcome the nullification.
Also in 1828 US Postmaster General McLean announced that Negroes could carry mail only if a white man supervised them. Clay and Secretary Barbour accused McLean of perfidious influence and patronage, but Adams saw no evidence and said he would not remove him for supporting Jackson’s presidential candidacy. Repeal of Louisiana’s Black Code enabled Jews in New Orleans to found the Gates of Mercy congregation. Journalist Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-79), who wrote “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and Northwood: Life North and South, the first novel about slavery, moved to Boston to edit the new Ladies Magazine. Lyman Beecher began publishing the religious journal, The Spirit of the Pilgrims which emphasized self-government and the holy heart. In Louisville, Kentucky the comedian Thomas “Daddy” Rice from New York made his face black to portray the character “Jim Crow” with Negro stereotypes in a “minstrel show.”
Neither Adams nor Andrew Jackson campaigned for President in 1828, leaving that to their supporters and newspapers. Those supporting Adams called themselves National Republicans. Jackson controlled his campaign from his home in Nashville. Jacksonians considered Adams a Federalist and themselves Democrats and also appealed to states rights’ Republicans. Both parties sponsored many state conventions.
This was one of the dirtiest campaigns in American history. Jackson was criticized for his vindictive anger, for fighting duels, and for “living in sin” with married Rachel from 1790 until her divorce led to their wedding in 1794. Jacksonians portrayed Adams as aristocratic for putting a billiard table in the White House and for heresy because of his Unitarian theology. Jacksonians emphasized the difference “between J. Q. Adams who can write and Andy Jackson who can fight.”
In 1828 the “Coffin Handbill” on the “bloody deeds of GENERAL JACKSON” was published with the names of six militia men who wanted to return to their homes after their enlistment ended during the Creek War; but they were charged with desertion, and Jackson had them shot. Philadelphia Press editor John Binns also included an account of a quarrel that Jackson ended by using his cane sword to run through Samuel Jackson as he was bending down to pick up a stone, though a grand jury acquitted General Jackson because of self-defense.
On June 13 Charles Hammond’s Gazette listed fourteen “juvenile indiscretions committed by Jackson that ended with his killing Charles Dickinson, brawling with the Bentons, and dispatching Samuel Jackson. On August 2 the pamphlet Gen. Jackson’s Negro Speculations accused him of investing in the purchase and sale of slaves. Adams was so depressed by the campaign that he stopped keeping his diary until after the election.
Adams emphasized progress and improvements, but Jackson took moderate positions on those while accepting slavery and opening Indian land to white settlers. Vice President Calhoun supported him and became his running mate while Adams chose Richard Rush of Pennsylvania. After DeWitt Clinton died suddenly on February 11. Senator Van Buren decided to run for Governor of New York, and he was elected on November 7.
Thurlow Weed edited the Anti-Masonic Enquirer which opposed Grand Master Mason Andrew Jackson and was supported by William Henry Seward. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton promoted a new agrarian policy for distributing public land and backed Jackson. Amos Kendall and Richard Mentor Johnson started the Argus of Western America, and their New Court Party was supported by pamphleteer Francis Preston Blair. They turned against Clay and supported Jackson’s democratic ideas.
The US Senate made Duff Green its official printer, and in Washington he used the United States Telegraph to criticize President Adams and Henry Clay. Green had fought in the War of 1812 and became a brigadier general in Missouri territory where he blamed government agents for causing most of the conflicts between Indians and settlers. In 1820 he was a delegate at the Missouri Constitutional Convention, and he was elected to the Missouri General Assembly. During the depression he backed relief programs in the Missouri Intelligencer. He borrowed money to buy the St. Louis Enquirer but sold it after the 1824 election. In 1826 John Eaton loaned him money to buy the United States Telegraph. Green wrote editorials, and Jackson thanked him for taking control of the Telegraph. He promoted Jackson as the candidate of the people and the Democracy party, and “Rough” Green attacked the aristocratic coalition of Adams and Clay. From March 1827 to October 1828 Green published the daily Telegraph concentrating on the election, promoting the National Republican Ticket of Jackson for President and Calhoun for Vice President.
North Carolina had nine Jacksonian newspapers, and Ohio added eighteen. On the other side was Truth’s Advocate and Monthly Anti-Jackson Expositor by the Cincinnati Gazette editor Charles Hammond. Adams was particularly upset by Samuel D. Ingham’s anonymous Exposition of the Political Conduct and Principles of John Quincy Adams which accused him of wanting “aristocratical and hereditary government.”
In this election voters with a 57.5% turnout were triple what they were in 1824. Many more people voted in western states than in New England. In 1828 only South Carolina and Delaware did not choose electors by the popular vote which was 1,555,340 men. Jackson got 647,276 votes and won 50% of the votes in free states and 73% in slave states. Because three-fifths of slaves were counted for state representation, Jackson gained 105 electoral votes from 200,000 votes in the South while he got only 73 electoral votes in the north from 400,000 votes. Southern planters and workers in the north supported Jackson, and the new Democratic Party elected him with 187 electoral votes to 89 for Adams who got 508,064 votes. Jackson got all the electoral votes in the South and the West plus Pennsylvania and a majority of New York’s. Jackson won New York, Ohio, and Kentucky by a total of only about 20,000 votes. If Adams had won those states, and if New York had used winner-take-all, Adams might have won by two electoral votes. Yet Jackson’s 56% of the popular vote would not be surpassed in the 19th century. Jackson was probably the first who tried to amend the Constitution to replace the Electoral College with the national popular vote.
President-elect Jackson wanted Indians moved west to prevent their annihilation, and on December 20 the US Government announced that the Cherokees had ceded their land and agreed to move west of the Mississippi to the Indian Territory. On the 22nd Jackson’s wife Rachel died.
Just before Christmas the Cocheco Manufacturing Company in Boston lowered the wages of the 800 girls working in the Dover mill by five cents and ordered their work speeded up, but male workers were not affected. About 600 of these girls met on Friday, December 26 and agreed not to work for that wage, and they marched in a procession around the factory with banners and signs and through the town. The company began hiring strike breakers, and by the 30th most of the girls were back working except for the strike leaders whom the company blacklisted.
Walker’s Appeal was an anti-slavery pamphlet that was published on 18 January 1829 and urged slaves to revolt. The next day Richard M. Johnson reported to the US Senate that the government does not need to recognize Sunday as the Christian day of worship. He argued that transporting mail on Sundays “does not interfere with the rights of conscience.” Religious practices are protected, and they have the right to use “their moral influence” to “advance the true interests of religion.” On March 2 Dr. John Dix Fisher founded the New England Asylum for the Blind.
1. The Annals of America, Volume 5, p. 641.
2. Donelson Papers, LC quoted in Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Freedom, 1822-1832 by Robert V. Remini, p. 6.
3. McCulloch v. Maryland.
4. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams ed. Charles Francis Adams, Vol. V, 11-12 quoted in John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy by Samuel Flagg Bemis, p. 419.
5. The Annals of America, Volume 5, p. 84.
6. Quoted in The Sage of Monticello by Dumas Malone, p. 428-429.
7. Ford, ed., “Documents on the Genesis of the Monroe Doctrine,” p. 405-9 quoted in The Presidency of James Monroe by Noble E. Cunningham, p. 158.
8. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume II, p. 218.
9. The American Literary Revolution 1783-1837, p. 240.
10. Ibid., p. 283.
11. Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789-1908, Volume II, p. 316.
12. Reports of the Secretary of the Treasury of the United States: Reports on the finances, by A. J. Dallas, Dec. 1815; Wm. H. Crawford, Dec. 1816-Dec. 1824; Richard Rush, Dec. 1825-Dec. 1828, p. 322.
13. Mechanics’ Free Press, November 29, 1828 in The Annals of America, Volume 5, p. 280-281.