What Were The Most Important Changes In The United States From 1877 To 1945

The United States from 1816 to 1850

The Era of Mixed Feelings

The years betwixt the election to the presidency of James Monroe in 1816 and of John Quincy Adams in 1824 accept long been known in American history as the Era of Adept Feelings. The phrase was conceived by a Boston editor during Monroe's visit to New England early in his first term. That a representative of the heartland of Federalism could speak in such positive terms of the visit by a Southern president whose decisive election had marked not just a sweeping Republican victory just also the demise of the national Federalist Party was dramatic testimony that erstwhile foes were inclined to put bated the sectional and political differences of the past.

Effects of the War of 1812

Later scholars have questioned the strategy and tactics of the The states in the War of 1812, the war'southward tangible results, and even the wisdom of commencing it in the showtime identify. To contemporary Americans, however, the striking naval victories and Jackson's victory over the British at New Orleans created a reservoir of "proficient feeling" on which Monroe was able to draw.

Abetting the mood of nationalism was the strange policy of the United States after the state of war. Florida was acquired from Spain (1819) in negotiations, the success of which owed more to Jackson's indifference to such niceties as the inviolability of foreign borders and to the state'southward evident readiness to back him up than information technology did to diplomatic finesse. The Monroe Doctrine (1823), actually a few phrases inserted in a long presidential message, alleged that the United States would non become involved in European affairs and would not take European interference in the Americas; its immediate result on other nations was slight, and that on its own denizens was impossible to approximate, yet its self-assured tone in warning off the Old World from the New reflected well the nationalist mood that swept the country.

Internally, the decisions of the Supreme Court under Main Justice Marshall in such cases as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824) promoted nationalism by strengthening Congress and national power at the expense of the states. The congressional decision to charter the second Bank of the United States (1816) was explained in part by the country's financial weaknesses, exposed by the War of 1812, and in part by the intrigues of financial interests. The readiness of Southern Jeffersonians—erstwhile strict constructionists—to support such a measure indicates, too, an amazing degree of nationalist feeling. Maybe the clearest sign of a new sense of national unity was the victorious Republican Party, standing in solitary splendour on the national political horizon, its long-fourth dimension foes the Federalists vanished without a trace (on the national level) and Monroe, the Republican standard-bearer, reelected so overwhelmingly in 1820 that it was long believed that the ane balloter vote denied him had been held dorsum only in order to preserve Washington's record of unanimous selection.

National disunity

For all the signs of national unity and feelings of oneness, as convincing evidence points in the contrary direction. The very Supreme Courtroom decisions that delighted friends of strong national government infuriated its opponents, while Marshall'due south defense of the rights of private property was construed by critics as betraying a predilection for i kind of property over some other. The growth of the West, encouraged by the conquest of Indian lands during the State of war of 1812, was by no ways regarded every bit an unmixed blessing. Eastern conservatives sought to keep land prices loftier; speculative interests opposed a policy that would be advantageous to poor squatters; politicians feared a change in the sectional balance of power; and businessmen were wary of a new section with interests unlike their own. European visitors testified that, fifty-fifty during the and so-called Era of Proficient Feelings, Americans characteristically expressed scorn for their countrymen in sections other than their own.

Economical hardship, especially the fiscal panic of 1819, also created disunity. The causes of the panic were complex, but its greatest effect was conspicuously the tendency of its victims to blame information technology on ane or some other hostile or malevolent involvement—whether the second Depository financial institution of the United States, Eastern capitalists, selfish speculators, or perfidious politicians—each accuse expressing the bad feeling that existed side by side with the good.

If harmony seemed to reign on the level of national political parties, disharmony prevailed within the states. In the early 19th-century United States, local and state politics were typically waged less on behalf of bang-up issues than for petty gain. That the goals of politics were often sordid did non mean that political contests were banal. In every section, country factions led by shrewd men waged bitter political warfare to achieve or entrench themselves in power.

The almost dramatic manifestation of national partition was the political struggle over slavery, particularly over its spread into new territories. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 eased the threat of further disunity, at to the lowest degree for the time being. The sectional rest betwixt us was preserved: in the Louisiana Buy, with the exception of the Missouri Territory, slavery was to be confined to the area south of the 36°xxx′ line. Yet this compromise did not end the crisis only merely postponed it. The determination by Northern and Southern senators not to be outnumbered by ane another suggests that the people connected to believe in the conflicting interests of the various great geographic sections. The weight of show indicates that the decade after the Boxing of New Orleans was non an era of good feelings so much as one of mixed feelings.

The economic system

The American economy expanded and matured at a remarkable rate in the decades after the State of war of 1812. The rapid growth of the W created a great new heart for the production of grains and pork, permitting the country's older sections to specialize in other crops. New processes of manufacture, particularly in textiles, non only accelerated an "industrial revolution" in the Northeast but also, by drastically enlarging the Northern market place for raw materials, helped business relationship for a blast in Southern cotton product. If past midcentury Southerners of European descent had come to regard slavery—on which the cotton economy relied—as a "positive expert" rather than the "necessary evil" that they had earlier held the system to be, it was largely because of the increasingly central function played by cotton wool in earning profits for the region. Industrial workers organized the land's starting time merchandise unions and even workingmen's political parties early in the period. The corporate form thrived in an era of booming upper-case letter requirements, and older and simpler forms of attracting investment capital were rendered obsolete. Commerce became increasingly specialized, the division of labour in the disposal of goods for auction matching the increasingly sophisticated sectionalization of labour that had come up to characterize production.

Edward Pessen

The management of the growing economy was inseparable from political conflict in the emerging U.s.a.. At the get-go the issue was between agrarians (represented by Jeffersonian Republicans) wanting a decentralized organization of like shooting fish in a barrel credit and an investing community looking for stability and profit in financial markets. This latter group, championed by Hamilton and the Federalists, won the first round with the establishment of the first Depository financial institution of the U.s. (1791), jointly owned past the government and individual stockholders. It was the regime's fiscal agent, and it put the centre of gravity of the credit system in Philadelphia, its headquarters. Its charter expired in 1811, and the fiscal anarchy that hindered procurement and mobilization during the ensuing War of 1812 demonstrated the importance of such centralization. Hence, fifty-fifty Jeffersonian Republicans were converted to acceptance of a 2nd Banking company of the United states, chartered in 1816.

The 2nd Banking company of the United States faced abiding political fire, but the conflict now was not simply between farming and mercantile interests but too between local bankers who wanted admission to the profits of an expanding credit system and those who, similar the president of the Bank of the United States, Nicholas Biddle, wanted more regularity and predictability in banking through top-down control. The Constitution gave the U.s. exclusive power to coin money simply immune for the chartering of banks past individual states, and these banks were permitted to issue notes that besides served as currency. The country banks, whose charters were often political plums, lacked coordinated inspection and safeguards confronting risky loans usually collateralized past state, whose value fluctuated wildly, every bit did the value of the banknotes. Overspeculation, bankruptcies, contraction, and panics were the inevitable issue.

Nicholas Biddle
Nicholas Biddle.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Biddle's promise was that the big deposits of government funds in the Bank of the Us would permit it to become the major lender to local banks, and from that position of strength information technology could squeeze the unsound ones into either responsibility or extinction. Only this notion ran afoul of the growing democratic spirit that insisted that the correct to extend credit and choose its recipients was too precious to be confined to a wealthy elite. This difference of views produced the archetype battle between Biddle and Jackson, culminating in Biddle'due south attempt to win recharter for the Bank of the United States, Jackson'south veto and transfer of the government funds to pet banks, and the Panic of 1837. Non until the 1840s did the federal government place its funds in an contained treasury, and not until the Civil State of war was there legislation creating a national banking system. The land was strong enough to survive, but the politicization of fiscal policy making continued to be a major theme of American economic history.

Panic of 1837
Forest engraving relating to the fiscal setback experienced on the U.S. frontier post-obit the Panic of 1837.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Transportation revolution

Improvements in transportation, a key to the advance of industrialization everywhere, were especially vital in the United States. A fundamental trouble of the developing American economic system was the great geographic extent of the country and the appallingly poor state of its roads. The broad challenge to weave the Great Lakes, Mississippi Valley, and Gulf and Atlantic coasts into a single national market was first met past putting steam to work on the rich network of navigable rivers. As early on as 1787, John Fitch had demonstrated a workable steamboat to onlookers in Philadelphia; some years after, he repeated the feat in New York City. Just it is characteristic of American history that, in the absence of governmental encouragement, private bankroll was needed to bring an invention into total play. As a event, popular credit for the first steamboat goes to Robert Fulton, who establish the financing to make his initial Hudson River run of the Clermont in 1807 more than a erstwhile feat. From that point forrard, on inland waters, steam was male monarch, and its most spectacular manifestation was the Mississippi River paddle wheeler, a unique cosmos of unsung marine engineers challenged to make a craft that could "piece of work" in shallow swift-running waters. Their solution was to put cargo, engines, and passengers on a apartment open up deck above the waterline, which was possible in the mild climate of large parts of the drainage basin of the Father of Waters. The Mississippi River steamboat not just became an instantly recognizable American icon but as well had an impact on the law. In the instance of Gibbons five. Ogden (1824), Chief Justice Marshall affirmed the exclusive right of the federal government to regulate traffic on rivers flowing between states.

John Fitch's steamboat — John Fitch'due south steamboat
Analogy of an early on version of John Fitch'south steamboat.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Canals and railroads were non as distinctively American in origin as the paddle wheeler, but, whereas 18th-century canals in England and continental Europe were elementary conveniences for moving bulky loads cheaply at depression speed, Americans integrated the land'southward water send system by connecting rivers flowing toward the Atlantic Body of water with the Bang-up Lakes and the Ohio-Mississippi River valleys. The best-known conduit, the Erie Canal, connected the Hudson River to the Great Lakes, linking the Westward to the port of New York City. Other major canals in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio joined Philadelphia and Baltimore to the West via the Ohio River and its tributaries. Canal building was increasingly popular throughout the 1820s and '30s, sometimes financed by states or by a combination of state and private try. But many overbuilt or unwisely begun canal projects complanate, and states that were "burned" in the process became more than wary of such ventures.

Erie Canal — Erie Culvert
Barge most the western end of the Erie Culvert, New York, mid-1800s.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

Canal evolution was overtaken by the growth of the railroads, which were far more than efficient in covering the bully distances underserved by the road system and indispensable in the trans-Mississippi Due west. Work on the Baltimore and Ohio line, the first railroad in the United States, was begun in 1828, and a great burst of construction boosted the country's rail network from goose egg to 30,000 miles (l,000 km) past 1860. The financing alone, no less than the operation of the burgeoning arrangement, had a huge political and economic bear on. Adams was a decided champion of "national internal improvements"—the federally assisted evolution of turnpikes, lighthouses, and dredging and channel-clearing operations (that is, any it took to help commerce). That term, nonetheless, was more closely associated with Henry Clay, like Adams a strong nationalist. Clay proposed an American Organization, which would, through internal improvements and the imposition of tariffs, encourage the growth of an industrial sector that exchanged manufactured goods for the products of U.S. agriculture, thus benefiting each section of the land. But the passionate opposition of many agrarians to the costs and expanded federal control inherent in the program created 1 battlefield in the long competition between the Democratic and Whig parties that did not end until the triumph of Whig economic ideas in the Republican party during the Civil War.