in production, the American manufacturers felt English competition more keenly as the years went by, and called for more protection.
153. James Monroe (q.v.) succeeded Madison as president in 1817, and, re-elected with hardly any opposition in 1820, he “Era of Good Feeling.” served until 1825.[1] So complete was the supremacy of the Republican party that this is often called “the era of good feeling.” It came to an end when a successor to Monroe was to be elected; the two sections of the dominant party then had their first opportunity for open struggle. During Monroe's two terms of office the nationalizing party developed the policy on which it proposed to manage national affairs. This was largely the product of the continually swelling western movement of population. The influence of the steamboat was felt more and more every year, and the want of a similar improvement in land transport was correspondingly evident. The attention drawn to western New York by the war had filled that part of the state with a new population. The southern Indians had been completely overthrown by Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812, and forced to cede their lands. Admission of New States. The admission of the new states of Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Maine (1820) and Missouri (1821)—all but Maine the product and evidence of western growth—were the immediate results of the development consequent upon the war. All the territory east of the Mississippi, except the northern part of the North-West Territory, was now formed into self-governing states; the state system had crossed the Mississippi; all that was needed for further development was the locomotive engine. The four millions of 1790 had grown into thirteen millions in 1830; and there was a steady increase of one-third in each decade.
154. The urgent demand of western settlers for some road to a market led to a variety of schemes to facilitate intercourse Erie Canal. between the East and the West—the most successful being that completed in New York in 1825, the Erie Canal. The Hudson river forms the great natural breach in the barrier range which runs parallel to the Atlantic coast. When the traveller has passed up the Hudson through that range he sees before him a vast campaign country extending westward to the Great Lakes, and perfectly adapted by nature for a canal. Such a canal, to turn western traffic into the lake rivers and through the lakes, the canal, and the Hudson to New York City, was begun by the state through the influence of De Witt Clinton, was derisively called “Clinton's big ditch” until its completion, and laid the foundations for the great commercial prosperity of New York state and city. Long before it was finished the evident certainty of its success had seduced other states into far less successful enterprises of the kind and had established as a nationalizing policy the combination of high tariffs and expenditures for internal improvements which was long known as the “American system.”[2] The tariffs of duties on The “American System.” imports were to be carried as high as revenue results would justify; within this limit the duties were to be defined for purposes of protection; and the superabundant revenues were to be expended on enterprises which would tend to aid the people in their efforts to subdue the continent. Protection was now to be for national benefit, not for the benefit of classes. Western farmers were to have manufacturing towns at their doors, as markets for the surplus which had hitherto been rotting on their farms; competition among manufacturers was to keep down prices; migration to all the new advantages of the West was to be made easy at national expense; and Henry Clay's eloquence was to commend the whole policy to the people. The old Democracy, particularly in the South, insisted that the whole scheme really had its basis in benefits to classes, that its communistic features were not such as the Constitution meant to cover by its grant of power to Congress to levy taxation for the general welfare, and that any such legislation would be unconstitutional. The dissatisfaction in Tariffs of 1824 and 1828. the South rose higher when the tariffs were increased in 1824 and 1828. The proportion of customs revenue to dutiable imports rose to 37% in 1825 and to 44% in 1829; and the ratio to aggregate imports to 33% in 1825 and 37% in 1829. As yet, Southern dissatisfaction showed itself only in resolutions of state legislatures.
155. In the sudden development of the new nation circumstances had conspired to give social forces an abnormally materialistic cast, and this had strongly influenced the expression of the national life. Its literature and its art had amounted to little, for the American people were still engaged in the fiercest of warfare against natural difficulties, which absorbed all their energies.
156. In international relations the action of the government was strong, quiet and self-respecting. Its first weighty action took place in 1823. It had become pretty evident that the Holy Alliance, in addition to its interventions in Europe to suppress popular risings, meant to aid Spain in bringing her revolted South American colonies to obedience. Great Britain had been drifting steadily away from the alliance, and George Canning, the new secretary, determined to call in the weight of the transatlantic power as a check upon it. A hint to the The Monroe Doctrine. American minister was followed by a few pregnant passages in Monroes annual message in December. “We could not view,” he said, “any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them [the South American states], or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States.” If both the United States and Great Britain were to take this ground the fate of a fleet sent by the Alliance across the Atlantic was not in much doubt, and the project was at once given up.
157. It was supposed at the time that Spain might transfer her colonial claims to some stronger power; and Monroe therefore said that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” This declaration and that quoted above constitute together the “Monroe doctrine” as originally proclaimed. The doctrine has remained the rule of foreign intercourse for all American parties. Added to the already established refusal of the United States to become entangled in any European wars or alliances, it has separated Europe and America to their common, advantage. (See Monroe Doctrine.)
158. By a treaty with Russia (1825) that power gave up all claims on the Pacific coast south of the present limits of Alaska. The North-west Boundary. The northern boundary of the United States had been defined by the treaty of 1783; and, after the acquisition of Louisiana, a convention with Great Britain (1818) settled the boundary on the line of 49° N. lat. as far west as the Rocky Mountains. West of these mountains the so-called Oregon country, on whose limits the two powers could not agree, was to be held in common possession for ten years. This common possession was prolonged by another convention (1827) indefinitely, with the privilege to either power to terminate it, on giving twelve months' notice. This arrangement lasted until 1846 (see Oregon: History).
159. Monroe's term' of office came to an end in March 1825. He had originally been an extreme Democrat, who could hardly speak of Washington with patience; he had slowly modified his views, and his tendencies were now eagerly claimed by
- ↑ In 1816 Monroe received 183 electoral votes and his opponent, Rufus King, 34; in 1820 Monroe received 231 and his opponent, John Quincy Adams, 1.
- ↑ For a generation the making of “internal improvements” by the Federal government was an issue of great political importance. In 1806 Congress made an appropriation for the National or Cumberland Road, eventually constructed from Fort Cumberland, Md., to Vandalia, Ill. The policy of making such improvements was opposed on the ground that the Constitution gave to the Federal government no power to make them, that it was not an “enumerated power,” and that such improvements were not a “necessary and proper” means of carrying out any of the enumerated powers. Others argued that the Federal government might constitutionally make such improvements, but could not exercise jurisdiction over them when made.
