increasing disposition to exalt and maintain the national element of the American system.
Extinction of the Federal party.183. The remainder of this period is one of the barrenest in American history. The opposition of the Federal party to the war completed the measure of its unpopularity, and it had only a perfunctory existence for a few years longer. There was but one real party, and the political struggles within it tended to take the shape of purely personal politics. Scandal, intrigue, and personal criticism became the most marked characteristics of American politics until the dominant party broke at the end of the period, and real party conflict was renewed. But the seeds of the final disruption are visible from the peace of 1814. The old-fashioned Republicans looked with intense suspicion on the new form of Republicanism generated by the war, a type which instinctively bent its energies toward the further development of national power. Clay was the natural leader of the new democracy; but John Quincy Adams and others of Federalist antecedents or leanings took to the new doctrines kindly; and even Calhoun, Crawford (p. 788), and others of the Southern interest were at first strongly inclined to support them. One of the first effects was the revival of protection and of a national bank.
Bank of the United States.184. The charter of the national bank (§ 146) had expired in 1811, and the dominant party had refused to recharter it. The attempt to carry on the war by loans resulted in almost a bankruptcy and in a complete inability to act efficiently. As soon as peace gave time for consideration, a second bank was chartered for twenty years, with a capital of $35,000,000, four-fifths of which might be in Government stock. It was to have the custody of the Government revenues, but the secretary of the treasury could divert the revenues to other custodians, giving his reasons for such action to Congress. This clause, meant to cover cases in which the Bank of the United States had no branch at a place where money was needed, was afterwards put to use for a very different purpose (§ 204).
Protection.185. Protection was advocated again on national grounds, but not quite on those which had moved Hamilton (§ 146). The additional receipts were now to be expended for fortifications and other national defences, and for national roads and canals, the latter to be considered solely as military measures, with an incidental benefit to the people. Business distress among the people gave additional force to the proposal. The war and blockade had been an active form of protection, under which American manufactures had sprung up in great abundance. As soon as peace was made English manufacturers poured their products into the United States, and drove their American rivals out of business or reduced them to desperate straits. Their cries to Congress for relief had a double effect. They gave the spur to the nationalizing advocates of protection, and, as most of the manufacturers were in New England or New York, they developed in the citadel of Federalism a class which looked for help to a Republican Congress, and was therefore bound to oppose the Federal party. This was the main force which brought New Manufactures.England into the Republican fold before 1825. An increase in the number of spindles from 80,000 in 1811 to 500,000 in 1815, and in cotton consumption from 500 bales in 1800 to 90,000 in 1815, the rise of manufacturing towns, and the rapid development of the mechanical tendencies of a people who had been hitherto almost exclusively agricultural, were influences which were to be reckoned with in the politics of a democratic country.
Tariff of 1816.186. The tariff of 1816 imposed a duty of about 25 per cent. on imports of cotton and woollen goods, and specific duties on iron imports. The ad valorem duties carried most of the manufacturers through the financial crisis of 1818-19, but the iron duties were less satisfactory. In English manufacture the substitution of coke for charcoal in iron production led to continual decrease in price. As the price went down the specific duties were continually increasing the absolute amount of protection. Thus spared the necessity for improvements in production, the American manufacturers felt English competition more keenly as the years went by, and called for more protection.
“Era of good feeling.”187. Monroe succeeded Madison as president in 1817, and, re-elected with hardly any opposition in 1820, he served until 1825. 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 Jackson during the war of 1812, and forced to cede their lands; all the territory west of Admission of Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, and Missouri.Georgia was thus opened up to settlement. 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 already crossed the Mississippi; and 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.
188. The urgent demand of Western settlers for some road to a market led to a variety of schemes to facilitate intercourse between the East and the West,—the most successful being that completed in New York in 1825, Erie Canal. 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 champaign 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 The “American system.” improvements which was long known as the “American system.” The tariffs of duties on imports were to be carried as high as revenue results would approve; within this limit the duties were to be defined for purposes of protection; and the superabundant revenues were to be expended for the improvement of roads, rivers, and harbours, and for every enterprise 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
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