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Eagleton
Digital Archive of American Politics
Era
of Good Feeling
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James
Monroe 1758-1831
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Source: The White House
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The
"Era of Good Feeling", a phrase first
used in the Boston Columbian Centinel newspaper on July 12,
1817 following the good-will visit to Boston of the new President
James
Monroe, is generally applied to describe the national mood
of the United States from about 1815 to 1825. The period after
the conclusion of the War of 1812 was marked by a lower level
of concern over potential foreign intervention on the American
continent, and a relative consensus over domestic policy illustrated
in the lack of partisan factions.
The
Era reached its peak in the election
of 1820, when President
Monroe was re-elected with all but one electoral vote--a
vote withheld only due to the voter's concern that George
Washington should remain as the sole president elected unanimously.
During that year, the bitter debate over slavery provoked
by the application of the territory of Missouri to be admitted
to the Union as a slave state was at least temporarily deferred
with The
Missouri Compromise, allowing Maine to split off as a
separate state from Massachusetts and join the Union to counter
the admission of Missouri, thus keeping the uneasy balance
of slave and free states. The 1820 election also marked the
effective end of the Federalist
Party, which had lost popular support due to its opposition
to the War of 1812, and opened a period where the Democratic-Republican
Party initially established by Thomas Jefferson governed
on the national level without substantial opposition.
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The
Era also saw other divisive issues, including the the enactment
of the first U.S. protective tariff and the establishment of the
second National Bank, either resolved or deferred. During Monroe's
second term, Florida was acquired from Spain and the President promulgated
what would later become known as the The
Monroe Doctrine, warning European powers against attempts to
re-assert their control over former colonies in the New World that
had declared their independence.
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...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....
The
Monroe Doctrine, December, 2, 1823, excerpt from President
James Monroe's Seventh Annual Message to Congress
Source:
The Avalon Project,
Yale Law School
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The
Era ended as Monroe's second term drew to a close, largely due to
the competing presidential ambitions of three
members of the President's
Cabinet--John
Quincy Adams, secretary of state, John
Calhoun, secretary of war, and Willliam
H. Crawford, secretary of the treasury. In addition to Madison's
advisers, Henry Clay
and Andrew
Jackson were also candidates. Calhoun was nominated for the
Vice-presidency. Of the other four, Jackson received 99 electoral
votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37; since no one had a majority,
the election was determined by the House of Representatives, which
was confined in its choice to the three candidates who had received
the largest number of votes. Clay, who was speaker of the House
of Representatives, and long had been hostile to Jackson, used his
influence for Adams, who was elected on the first ballot cast in
the House.
After
his inauguration, Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State. This
greatly angered Jackson and his supporters, who charged that a "corrupt
bargain" had taken place and immediately began their campaign
to win the Presidency from Adams in 1828.
Resources
The
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
Era
of Good Feeling>>Harwich
(MA) School District
Era
of Good Feelings>> Encyclopaedia
Brittanica
Presidential
Election of 1824>> Multieducator,
Inc.
Next-Jacksonian
Democracy
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