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29 chapters
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
LIST OF AUTHORS AND TITLES
Vol. 1 European Background of American History, by Edward Potts Cheyney, A.M., Prof. European Hist., Univ. of Pa. Vol. 2 Basis of American History, by Livingston Farrand, LL.D., President Univ. of Colo. Vol. 3 Spain in America, by the late Edward Gaylord Bourne, Ph.D., formerly Prof. Hist., Yale Univ. Vol. 4 England in America, by Lyon Gardiner Tyler, LL.D., President William and Mary College. Vol. 5 Colonial Self-Government, by Charles McLean Andrews, Ph.D., Prof. Am. History, Yale University.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., President Samuel A. Green, M.D., Vice-President James Ford Rhodes, LL.D., ad Vice-President Edward Channing, Ph.D., Prof. History Harvard University Worthington C. Ford, Chief of Division of MSS., Library of Congress,...
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THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THE WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Reuben G. Thwaites, LL.D., Secretary and Superintendent Frederick J. Turner, Ph.D., Prof. of American History, Wisconsin University James D. Butler, LL.D., formerly Prof. Wisconsin University William W. Wight, President Henry E. Legler, Curator...
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THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
William Gordon McCabe, Litt. D., President Lyon G. Tyler, LL.D., Pres. of William and Mary College Judge David C. Richardson J. A. C. Chandler, Professor Richmond College Edward Wilson James...
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THE TEXAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
THE TEXAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY
Judge John Henninger Reagan, President George P. Garrison, Ph.D., Prof. of History, University of Texas Judge C. W. Raines Judge Zachary T. Fullmore 1819-1829...
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WITH MAPS
WITH MAPS
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1906, by HARPER & BROTHERS. Printed in the United States of America...
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TO
TO
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii AUTHOR'S PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviii [Proofreaders note: Index and Maps omitted]...
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EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION
In many previous volumes of the series, the region beyond the Alleghenies has been recognized as an influence and a potentiality in American history. Thwaites, in his "France in America," shows how the French opened up the country and prepared the way; the Tennessee and Kentucky settlements are described in Howard's "Preliminaries of the Revolution"; Van Tyne's "American Revolution" goes into the earliest western governments; McLaughlin's "Confederation and Constitution" deals with the organizat
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AUTHOR'S PREFACE
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
In the present volume I have kept before myself the importance of regarding American development as the outcome of economic and social as well as political forces. To make plain the attitude and influence of New England, the middle region, the south, and the west, and of the public men who reflected the changing conditions of those sections in the period under consideration, has been my principal purpose. The limits of the volume have prevented the elaboration of some points well worthy of fulle
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RISE OF THE NEW WEST
RISE OF THE NEW WEST
The history of the United States is the history of a growing nation. Every period of its life is a transitional period, but that from the close of the War of 1812 to the election of Andrew Jackson was peculiarly one of readjustment. It was during this time that the new republic gave clear evidence that it was throwing off the last remnants of colonial dependence. The Revolution had not fully severed the United States from the European state system; but now the United States attained complete ind
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
By geographical position, the land of the Puritans was devoted to provincialism. While other sections merged into one another and even had a west in their own midst, New England was obliged to cross populous states in order to reach the regions into which national life was expanding; and her sons who migrated found themselves under conditions that weakened their old affiliations and linked their fortunes with the section which they entered. The ocean had dominated New England's interests and con
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
The middle states formed a zone of transition between the east and the west, the north and the south [Footnote: For earlier discussions of the middle colonies and states, see Tyler, ENGLAND IN AMERICA, chap, xvii.; Andrews, COLONIAL SELF-GOVERNMENT, chaps, v., vii., xviii., xix.; Greene, PROVINCIAL AMERICA, chaps. xvi.-xviii. (AM. NATION, IV., V., VI.)]. Geographically, they lay on the line of the natural routes between the Atlantic on the one side, and the Ohio and the Great Lakes on the other.
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
In the decade which forms the subject of this volume, no section underwent more far-reaching changes than did the group of South Atlantic states made up of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, with which this chapter will deal under the name of the south. Then it was that the south came to appreciate the effect of the westward spread of the cotton-plant upon slavery and politics. The invention of the cotton-gin by Eli Whitney, [Footnote: Am. Hist. Review, III., 99.] in 1793, made poss
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
The rise of the new west was the most significant fact in American history in the years immediately following the War of 1812. Ever since the beginnings of colonization on the Atlantic coast a frontier of settlement had advanced, cutting into the forest, pushing back the Indian, and steadily widening the area of civilization in its rear. [Footnote: Three articles by F.J. Turner, viz.: "Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1893, 199-227; "Problem of the W
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
Arrived at the nearest point to his destination on the Ohio, the emigrant either cut out a road to his new home or pushed up some tributary of that river in a keel-boat. If he was one of the poorer classes, he became a squatter on the public lands, trusting to find in the profits of his farming the means of paying for his land. Not uncommonly, after clearing the land, he sold his improvements to the actual purchaser, under the customary usage or by pre-emption laws. [Footnote: Hall, Statistics o
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
By 1820 the west had developed the beginnings of many of the cities which have since ruled over the region. Buffalo and Detroit were hardly more than villages until the close of this period. They waited for the rise of steam navigation on the Great Lakes and for the opening of the prairies. Cleveland, also, was but a hamlet during most of the decade; but by 1830 the construction of the canal connecting the Cuyahoga with the Scioto increased its prosperity, and its harbor began to profit by its n
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
In the decade of which we write, more than two-thirds of the present area of the United States was Indian country—a vast wilderness stretching from the Great Lakes to the Pacific Ocean. East of the Mississippi, the pioneers had taken possession of the hardwoods of the Ohio, but over the prairies between them and the Great Lakes the wild flowers and grasses grew rank and undisturbed. To the north, across Michigan and Wisconsin, spread the somber, white-pine wilderness, interlaced with hardwoods,
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
In 1820 the United States had a population of about nine and one- half millions; in 1830, nearly thirteen millions. It was spread out from east to west like a page in the history of society. On the Atlantic seaboard were the centers of American civilization that had grown up in colonial days in close touch with Europe. From this region of commerce and manufacture, the nation, on its march towards the west, changed through successive types of industrial life until in the Rocky Mountains the front
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
In the dark period of the commercial crisis of 1819, while Congress was considering the admission of Missouri, the slavery issue flamed out, and revealed with startling distinctness the political significance of the institution, fateful and ominous for the nation, transcending in importance the temporary financial and industrial ills. The advance of settlement in the United States made the slavery contest a struggle for power between sections, marching in parallel columns into the west, each car
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
To the superficial observer, politics might have seemed never more tranquil than when, in 1820, James Monroe received all but one of the electoral votes for his second term as president of the United States. One New Hampshire elector preferred John Quincy Adams, although he was not a candidate, and this deprived Monroe of ranking with Washington in the unanimity of official approval. But in truth the calm was deceptive. The election of 1820 was an armistice rather than a real test of political f
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
The place of slavery in the westward expansion of the nation was not the only burning question which the American people had to face in the presidency of Monroe. Within a few years after that contest, the problem of the independence of the New World and of the destiny of the United States in the sisterhood of new American republics confronted the administration. Should the political rivalries and wars of Europe to acquire territory be excluded from the western hemisphere? Should the acquisition
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
The transformation by which the slender line of the Indian trail became the trader's trace, and then a road, superseded by the turnpike and canal, and again replaced by the railroad, is typical of the economic development of the United States. As the population of the west increased, its surplus products sought outlets. Improved means of communication became essential, and when these were furnished the new lines of internal trade knitted the nation into organic unity and replaced the former colo
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
As has been shown in the last chapter, the attitude of portions of the south towards strict construction was not inveterate upon measures which promised advantages to that section. But the tariff struggle revealed the spirit which arose when powers were asserted unfavorable to any section. The failure of the tariff bill of 1820 [Footnote: See above, chap. ix.] was followed by other unsuccessful attempts to induce a majority of Congress to revive the subject. The messages of Monroe favored a mode
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
As we have seen, [Footnote: See above, chap. x.] the dissensions in Monroe's cabinet approached the point of rupture by the spring and summer of 1822, when the spectacle was presented of the friends of the secretary of the treasury making war upon the measures of the secretary of war, and even antagonizing the president himself. Crawford's followers gained the name of the "radicals," and declared as their principles, democracy, economy, and reform. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 56; Mass. Hist.
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
For eight years President Monroe had administered the executive department of the federal government-years that have been called the "Era of Good Feeling." The reader who has followed the evidences of factional controversy among the rival presidential candidates in the cabinet, and noted the wide-spread distress following the panic of 1819, the growing sectional jealousies, the first skirmishes in the slavery struggle, and the clamor of a democracy eager to assert its control and profoundly dist
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CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVII
(1825-1829) What Adams had nearest at heart in his administration was the construction of a great system of roads and canals, irrespective of local interests, for the nation as a whole. [Footnote: Wheeler, Hist. of Cong., II., 154; Adams, Memoirs, VII., 59, VIII., 444; cf. chap, xiii., above.] To "exalt the valleys and lay low the mountains and the hills" appealed to his imagination. He hoped that the increased price of the public lands, arising from the improved means of communication, would in
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CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XVIII
From the close of the War of 1812, an increasing reaction was in progress in various states against the ardent nationalism which characterized the country at that time. The assertion of the doctrine of state sovereignty by the Hartford Convention in 1814 [Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.] so aroused the other sections of the country that particularism was for the time discredited. Leaders of Virginia politics even approved a rumor that Madison would march troops
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CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XIX
THE TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS AND THE SOUTH CAROLINA EXPOSITION (1827- 1828) While the slavery agitation was inflaming the minds of South Carolina and her sister states of the cotton region, and while Georgia, half a frontier state, was flinging defiance at the general government when it checked her efforts to complete the possession of her territory, the reopening of the tariff question brought the matter of state resistance to a climax. The tariff of 1824 was unsatisfactory to the woolen interest
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
The authorities characterized in the Critical Essays of Babcock's Rise of American Nationality, MacDonald's Jacksonian Democracy, and Hart's Slavery and Abolition (American Nation, XIII., XV., XVI.), include most of the general authorities, and need not be repeated here in detail. In addition, account should be taken of several indexes to government documents: L.C. Ferrell, Tables… and Annotated Index (1902); two by J.G. Ames: Finding List (1893) and Check List (1895); J.M. Baker, Finding List (
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