American Communities

71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.
QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 268
C H A P T E R
An Agrarian Republic
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 269
CHAPTER OUTLINE
NORTH AMERICAN COMMUNITIES
FROM COAST TO COAST
The Former American Colonies
Spanish Colonies
Haiti and the Caribbean
British North America
Russian America
Trans-Appalachia: Cincinnati
Atlantic Ports: From Charleston to Boston
A NATIONAL ECONOMY
Cotton and the Economy of the Young Republic
Shipping and the Economic Boom
THE JEFFERSON PRESIDENCY
Republican Agrarianism
Jefferson’s Government
An Independent Judiciary
Opportunity: The Louisiana Purchase
Incorporating Louisiana
Texas and the Struggle for Mexican Independence
RENEWED IMPERIAL RIVALRY
IN NORTH AMERICA
Problems with Neutral Rights
The Embargo Act
Madison and the Failure of “Peaceable Coercion”
A Contradictory Indian Policy
Indian Resistance
THE WAR OF 1812
The War Hawks
The Campaigns Against the Northern
and Southern Indians
The Hartford Convention
The Treaty of Ghent
DEFINING THE BOUNDARIES
Another Westward Surge

The Election of 1816 and the Era of Good Feelings
The American System
The Diplomacy of John Quincy Adams
The Panic of 1819
The Missouri Compromise
269
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 270
Expansion Touches Mandan Villages on the Upper Missouri
n mid-October 1804, news arrived at the Mandan vil- was used for community gatherings, and each of the other earth
lages, prominently situated on bluffs overlooking the lodges was home to a senior woman, her husband, her sisters
upper Missouri River, that an American military party (perhaps married to the same man as she, for the Mandans prac-
led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark was coming up the ticed polygamy), their daughters and their unmarried sons, along
river. The principal chiefs, hoping for expanded trade and sup- with numerous grandchildren. Matrilineal clans, the principal
port against their enemies the Sioux, welcomed these first institution of the community, distributed food to the sick,
American visitors. As the expedition’s three boats and forty- adopted orphans, cared for the dependent elderly, and punished
three men approached the village, Clark wrote, “Great numbers wrongdoers. A village council of male clan leaders selected chiefs
on both sides flocked down to the bank to view us.” That evening, who led by consensus and lost power when people no longer
the Mandans welcomed the Americans with an enthusiastic accepted their opinions.
dance and gifts of food. Lewis and Clark had been sent by President Thomas
Since the fourteenth century, when they migrated from the Jefferson to survey the Louisiana Purchase and to find an over-
East, the Mandans had lived along the Missouri, on the edge of land route to the Pacific Ocean. They were also instructed to
the Great Plains in what is now North Dakota. They believed inform the Indians that they now owed loyalty—and trade—to
their homeland was “the very center of the world,” and indeed the American government, thereby challenging British economic
it is in the heart of the North American continent. Mandan control over the lucrative North American fur trade. Meeting
men hunted buffalo and Mandan women kept storage pits full with the village chiefs, the Americans offered the Mandans a
with abundant crops of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and military and economic alliance. His people would like nothing
tobacco grown on the fertile soil of the river bottomlands. The better, responded Chief Black Cat, for the Mandans had fallen
Mandan villages were also the central marketplace of the north- on hard times over the past decade. [Some twenty years earlier],
ern Plains; at trading time in late summer they filled with Crows, “the smallpox destroyed the greater part of the nation,” the chief
Assiniboins, Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Arapahoes. Well before said. “All the nations before this malady [were] afraid of them,
any of these people, or those of other tribes, had met a European, [but] after they were reduced, the Sioux and other Indians waged
they were trading in kettles, knives, and guns acquired from the war, and killed a great many.” Black Cat was skeptical that the
French and English to the east and leatherwork, glassware, and Americans would deter the Sioux, but Clark reassured him. “We
horses acquired from the Spanish in the Southwest. were ready to protect them,” Clark reported in his journal, “and
The eighteenth century had been a golden age for the kill those who would not listen to our good talk.”
Mandan, who with their closely related Hidatsa neighbors num- The Americans spent the winter with the Mandans, joining
bered about 3,000 in 1804. In each of their five villages, earth in their communal life and establishing firm and friendly rela-
lodges surrounded a central plaza. One large ceremonial lodge tions with them. There were dances and joint hunting parties,
frequent visits to the earth lodges, long talks around the fire,
and, for many of the men, pleasant nights in the company of
Mandan women. Lewis and Clark spent many hours acquiring
important geographic information from the Mandans, who drew
Mandan
Villages
charts and maps showing the course of the Missouri, the ranges
of the Rocky Mountains, and places where one could cross the
Continental Divide. The information provided by the Mandans
and other Indian peoples to the west was vital to the success of
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 271
AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 271
the expedition. Lewis and Clark’s “voyage of discovery” depended fewer than 150. Four Bears, a Mandan chief who had been a child
largely on the willingness of Indian peoples to share their knowl- at the time of the Lewis and Clark visit, spoke these last words
edge of the land with the Americans. to the remnants of his people:
In need of interpreters who could help them communicate “I have loved the whites,” he declared. “I have lived with
with other Indian communities on their way, the Americans them ever since I was a boy.” But in return for the kindness of
hired several multilingual Frenchmen who lived with the the Mandans, the Americans had brought this plague. “I do not
Mandans. They also acquired the services of Sacajawea, the fear death, my friends,” he said, “but to die with my face rotten,
fifteen-year-old Lemhi wife of one of the Frenchmen, who that even the wolves will shrink with horror at seeing me, and
became the only woman to join the westward journey. The pres- say to themselves, that is Four Bears, the friend of the whites.”
ence of Sacajawea and her baby son was a signal, as Clark noted, “They have deceived me,” he pronounced with his last breath.
to “all the Indians as to our friendly intentions”; everyone knew “Those that I always considered as brothers turned out to be my
that women and children did not go on war parties. worst enemies.”
When the party left the Mandan villages in March, Clark In sending Lewis and Clark on their “voyage of discov-
wrote that his men were “generally healthy, except venereal com- ery” to claim the land and the loyalty of the Mandans and
plaints which is very common amongst the natives and the men other western Indian communities, President Jefferson was
catch it from them.” After an arduous journey across the Rockies, motivated by his vision of an expanding American republic of
the party reached the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the self-sufficient farmers. During his and succeeding presidencies,
Columbia River, where they spent the winter. Overdue and feared expansion became a key element of national policy and pride.
lost, they returned in triumph to St. Louis in September 1806. Yet, as the experience of the Mandans showed, what Jefferson
Before long the Americans had established Fort Clark at the viewed as enlargement of “the empire for liberty” had a dark
Mandan villages, giving American traders a base for challenging side—the destruction, from disease and coerced displacement,
British dominance of the western fur trade. The permanent of the communities created by America’s first peoples. The
American presence brought increased contact, and with it much effects—economic, political, and social—of continental expan-
more disease. In 1837, a terrible smallpox epidemic carried away sion dominate the history of the United States in the first half
the vast majority of the Mandans, reducing the population to of the nineteenth century.
The development of America’s economy in a world of warring great powers

The role of Jefferson’s presidency and his agrarian republicanism in forging
a national identity
The ending of colonial dependency by the divisive War of 1812
The nationalizing force of westward expansion
North American Communities WITH WHAT powers did the United

From Coast to Coast States share North America in the decades
after independence?
n spite of the political turmoil of the 1790s, the young United States entered
I the new century full of national pride and energy. But the larger issue, America’s
place in the world, was still uncertain, beginning with its situation on the North
American continent (see Map 9-1).
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 272
272 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824
R US S IAN
AME R IC A
Hudson
Sitka R U P E RT ' S L A N D Bay
(1802) B R
I T
I S A
H C
N O R R I
T H A M E
A
D
MARITIME
NA
A Quebec PROVINCES
LOWER C
UPPER
OR E GON CA Montreal
INDIANA N
ADA Halifax
C OUNT RY S PA N I S H TERRITORY Detroit
(1701) Fort Dequesne Boston
Fort Miami (Pittsburgh)
LOUISIANA (1704)
NORTHWEST (1704)
New York
Fort Ross Fort Vincennes TERRITORY Philadelphia
(Russian 1812) (1702)
Cincinnati Baltimore
St Louis (1788)
San Francisco ALTA (1763) Louisville
(1776) (1778)
CALIFORNIA
Santa Fé
Memphis Nashville
(1779)
ATLANTIC
Los Angeles (1609) SOUTHWEST
(1781)
TERRITORY
Tucson
Nacogdoches
(1791) Natchez
Charleston
OCEAN
(1716)
TEXAS Mobile St. Augustine
San Antonio New (1710)
de Bejar Orleans SPANISH
(1718) (1718) FLORIDA
GULF OF
NEW
MEXICO
S PA I N
CUBA PUERTO
Mexico RICO
PACIFIC City HAITI
WEST
SANTO
JAMAICA DOMINGO INDIES
OCEAN
CARIBBEAN SEA BARBADOS
MAP 9-1
North America in 1800 In 1800, the new United States of America shared the North American continent with territo-
ries held by the European powers: British Canada, French Louisiana (secretly ceded that year to France by Spain),
Spanish Florida, Spanish Mexico, and Russian Alaska, expanding southward along the Pacific coast. Few people
could have imagined that by 1850, the United States would span the continent. But the American settlers who had
crossed the Appalachians to the Ohio River Valley were already convinced that opportunity lay in the West.
The Former American Colonies

At first glance, the United States of America in 1800 was little different from the scat-
tered colonies of the pre-Revolution era. Two-thirds of the young nation’s people
still lived in a long thin line of settlement within fifty miles of the Atlantic coast.
From New Hampshire to Georgia, most people lived on farms or in small towns.
Because they rarely traveled far from home, peoples’ horizons were limited and
local. Nevertheless, the new nation was already transforming itself: between 1790 and
1800, according to the first and second federal censuses, the American population
grew from 3.9 million to 5.3 million. Growth by migration was greatest in the trans-
Appalachian West, a region that was already home to approximately 100,000 Indians.
From 1800 to 1850, in an extraordinary burst of territorial expansion, Americans
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 273
surged westward all the way to the Pacific. In 1800, few people would have predicted Class Discussion Question 9.1
that within fifty years the nation would encompass the entire continent. At that
time, the United States of America was a new and weak nation sharing a continent
with the colonies of many of the world’s great powers.
Spanish Colonies
On paper, Spain possessed most of North America, but its control crumbled rapidly QUICK REVIEW
in the 1790s, affecting New Spain, the richest colony in Spanish America. Mexico Spanish Colonies
City, with a population of 200,000, was by far the largest and most elegant city on the Tensions mounted between peninsulares
continent. But there were smoldering problems. Tensions mounted between the and criollos.
Spanish-born peninsulares, high officials and bureaucrats, and the native-born criollos Spanish established a chain of twenty-one
missions in a last effort to protect Mexico.
of Spanish descent, who chafed at their subordination, especially after the success of
American traders were making inroads
the American Revolution. In the 1790s, there were two abortive criollo conspiracies on Spanish-held territory along
on behalf of independence in Mexico City alone. Furthermore, none of New Spain’s the Mississippi River.
northern provinces, created to protect the approaches to Mexico’s fabulously wealthy
silver mines, thrived. In all of the older settlements—San Antonio, Santa Fé, and
Tucson—only a handful of persons of Spanish descent lived among a preponder-
antly native population. This was true even in the most recently founded northern
province, Alta (Upper) California.
In 1769, in their last effort to protect their rich colony of Mexico, the Spanish
established a chain of twenty-one missions in Alta California that stretched north
from San Diego (1769) to Sonoma (1823). The largest of these missions was Los
Angeles, which in 1800 had a largely mestizo population of 300. The town, which
was the social center for the vast countryside surrounding it, functioned chiefly as a
center of governmental authority (see Chapter 5). Despite Spain’s desire to seal its
territory from commerce with other nations, a brisk but illegal trade in otter skins,
hides, and tallow developed between the United States and California after the first
American ship, the Lelia Bird, arrived in 1803.
American traders were making inroads on Spanish-held territory along the
Mississippi River as well. New Orleans, acquired by Spain from France at the end of the
Seven Years’ War in 1763, was becoming a thriving international port. In 1801, it shipped
more than $3 million worth of tobacco, sugar, rice, cotton, fruits, and vegetables to
Europe. Every year, a greater proportion of products for the New Orleans trade was sup-
plied by Americans living some distance up the Mississippi River. Pinckney’s 1795 treaty
with Spain guaranteed Americans free navigation of the Mississippi River and the right
to deposit goods at the port of New Orleans. Nevertheless, Americans were uncom-
fortably aware that the city’s crucial location at the mouth of the Mississippi meant
that whatever foreign nation possessed New Orleans had the power to choke off the
flourishing trade in the vast Mississippi Valley river system.
More than 600 miles north was the small trading town of St. Louis, founded by
the New Orleans trader Pierre Laclède in 1763. By 1800, the town had fewer than a
thousand residents, three-quarters of whom were involved in the Indian trade of the
Missouri River. Spanish officials tried to supervise that trade from their offices in the
town, but real control rested in the hands of the Laclède and other French traders.
Americans visiting this shabby little place laughed at Laclède’s prediction that St. Louis
would become “one of the finest cities in America,” but he was right.
Haiti and the Caribbean

The Caribbean posed other challenges. The rich sugar-producing islands, various
colonies of Spain (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo), France (Martinique,
Guadaloupe, and Saint-Domingue), and Britain (Barbados, Jamaica, and a number
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 274
of smaller islands), provided 80 to 90 percent of the European supply of sugar. All

the sugar plantations used enslaved Africans as the labor force. Thus, they shared with
the slave-holding American South a distinctive Afro–North American society that cut
across national boundaries. This world was jolted in 1791 by the revolt of black slaves
in Saint-Domingue, France’s richest colony. Under the leadership of Toussaint
L’Ouverture, the former colony, renamed Haiti, became North America’s first inde-
pendent black nation. Its existence struck fear into the hearts of white slave owners
at the same time that it served as a beacon of hope to the enslaved.
British North America

British North America had been wrested from the French in the Seven Years’ War
(see Chapter 6). In 1800, its heart remained the former French colony of Québec
(at that time called the province of Lower Canada), with a predominantly French
population of about 160,000. Most of the rest of the settlers elsewhere were American,
either Loyalists driven out at the time of the Revolution or simply farmers in search
of better land. British authorities, fearing civil disturbances, discouraged American
immigrants from settling among the French, directing them instead either to the
Maritime Provinces, dominated by Nova Scotia’s great port, Halifax, or to Upper
Canada, the first inland colony north of the Great Lakes, established in 1791. Farther
west (and closed to settlement) lay Rupert’s Land, the great stretch of the Canadian
north and west that was administered by the Hudson’s Bay Company. To allay pop-
ular demands stimulated by the American Revolution, Britain established legislative
assemblies in Upper and Lower Canada and in the Maritimes in 1791, but, learn-
ing from its American fiasco, Britain kept the legislatures under strong executive
This view shows Sitka, the center of Russian control. British North America dominated the continental fur trade and the great
activities in Alaska, in 1827. Russian architec-
succession of waterways—the St. Lawrence River, the Great Lakes, and the rivers
tural styles and building techniques are apparent
in the Church of St. Michael the Archangel
beyond—that made it possible. Britain was on friendly terms with many of the native
in the right background, contrasting with the Asian peoples who were part of the trade. This economic grip was a challenge and frus-
and Indian origins of most of Sitka’s inhabitants. tration to many westward-moving Americans. At the same time, the dispersed nature
Freidrich H. von Kittlitz, A View of the Russian Capital, 1827. of the Canadian colonies made them, at least in the eyes of some Americans, ripe
Elmer E. Rosmusen Library Rare Books, University of Alaska,
Fairbanks, from F.P. Litke, Coozy. The Charles Bunnell
for conquest.
Collection, Acc. 12-345-678, Archives and Manuscripts,
Alaska and Polar Regions Department. Russian America
Finally, Russian occupation of what is now Alaska
posed another, rather remoter threat to the
United States. Russian settlement of Alaska was
an extension of its conquest of Siberia, which was
driven by the fur trade. In 1741, commissioned
by Tsar Peter the Great, the Danish-born naval
officer Vitus Bering sailed east from Kamchatka
across the sea that now bears his name, explored
the Aleutian Islands, and made landfall on the
southern coast of Alaska. In the aftermath of his
voyages, Russian and Siberian fur trappers, known
as promyshleniki, became regular visitors to the
Aleutian Islands and the Alaskan coast. By the late
1750s, they were shipping a steady supply of furs
from Russian America.
The Russians sometimes took furs by force,
holding whole villages hostage and brutalizing
the native Inuit and Aleut peoples. After the Aleut
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 275
Revolt of 1766, the Russian authorities promised to end the abuse, but by 1800, the QUICK REVIEW
precontact population of 25,000 Aleuts had been greatly reduced. At the same time, European Colonies in the Early Nineteenth
sexual relations and intermarriage between fur trappers and Aleut women created Century
a large group of Russian creoles who assumed an increasingly prominent position in Spain: challenged in its efforts to control
the Alaskan fur trade as navigators, explorers, clerks, and traders as the fur trade New Spain and the Caribbean.
Britain: government of Canada reflected
became permanent.
lessons learned in the colonies.
The Russian-American Company, chartered by the tsar in 1799, first set up Russia: rapidly expanding presence
American headquarters at Kodiak. When overhunting caused a scarcity of furs, the centered on Alaska and the Northwest.
Russians moved their headquarters south to Sitka, in what is now the southeastern
panhandle of Alaska. This was the homeland of the Tlingits, a warrior society, who
destroyed the Russians’ first fortress in the Tlingit Revolt of 1802. The Russians
reestablished Sitka by force in 1804, and over the next generation established Russian
settlements along the Pacific coast as far south as Fort Ross, which was just north of
San Francisco Bay and well within Spanish territory. The Russian presence in North
America was rapidly expanding even as Spain’s faltered. In 1800, however, this impe-
rial duel was far from the consciousness of most Americans, who were more con-
cerned about the continuing presence of the British to the north in Canada and the
nearby racial powder keg in the Caribbean.
Trans-Appalachia: Cincinnati
Within the United States itself, the region of greatest growth was territory west of Guideline 5.6
the Appalachian Mountains, and it was this area that was most affected by fears of con-
tinuing British influence on regional Indian peoples. By 1800, about 500,000 people
(the vast majority from Virginia and North Carolina) had found rich and fertile land
along the Ohio River system. Soon there was enough population for statehood.
Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796) were the first trans-Appalachian states admit-
ted to the Union.
Migration was a principal feature of American life. Probably 5 to 10 percent of
all American households moved each year. In the rural areas of the Atlantic seaboard,
a third of the households counted in the 1790 census had moved by 1800; in cities,
the proportion was closer to half. Migration to the West was generally a family affair,
with groups of kin moving together to a new area. One observer wrote of a caravan
moving across the mountains: “They had prepared baskets made of fine hickory
withe or splints, and fastening two of them together with ropes they put a child in each
basket and put it across a pack saddle.” Once pioneers had managed to struggle by
road over the Appalachians, they gladly took to the rivers, especially the Ohio, to
move farther west.
Cincinnati, strategically situated 450 miles downstream from Pittsburgh, was a
particularly dramatic example of the rapid community growth and development that
characterized the trans-Appalachian region. Founded in 1788, Cincinnati began life as
a military fort, defending settlers in the fertile Miami River Valley of Ohio from resis-
tance by Shawnee and Miami Indians. Conflict between these Indian peoples and the
new settlers was so fierce that the district was grimly referred to as “the slaughterhouse.”
After the battle of Fallen Timbers broke Indian resistance in 1794, Cincinnati became
the point of departure for immigrants arriving by the Ohio River on their way to set-
tle the interior of the Old Northwest: Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In 1800, Cincinnati
had a population of about 750 people. By 1810, it had tripled in size, confirming its boast
to be “the Queen City of the West.”
Cincinnati merchants were soon shipping farm goods from the fertile Miami
Valley down the Ohio–Mississippi River system to New Orleans, 1,500 miles away. River
hazards such as snags and sandbars made the downriver trip by barge or keelboat
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 276
hazardous, and the return trip upriver was slow,

more than three months from New Orleans to
Cincinnati. Frequently, rivermen simply aban-
doned their flatboats in New Orleans and trav-
eled home overland, on foot or horseback, by the
long and dangerous Natchez Trace, an old Indian
trail that linked Natchez on the Mississippi with
Nashville, Tennessee. Nevertheless, river traffic
increased yearly, and the control of New Orleans
became a key concern of western farmers and
merchants. If New Orleans refused to accept
American goods, Cincinnati merchants and many
thousands of trans-Appalachian farmers would
be ruined.
Atlantic Ports: From

Charleston to Boston
Although only 3 percent of the nation’s popula-
tion lived in cities, the Atlantic ports continued,
as in the colonial era, to dominate the nation eco-
When John Caspar Wild painted this view
nomically and politically. Seaports benefited from the advantage of relatively quick
of Cincinnati in 1835, its location on the Ohio
River had already established it as center waterborne trade and communication over much slower land travel. Merchants in
for the trade in agricultural goods shipped the seaboard cities found it easier to cross the Atlantic than to venture into their own
down the river to New Orleans, first by flatboat backcountry in search of trade. In 1800, the nation’s most important urban centers
and later by steamboat. (John Caspar Wild, were all Atlantic seaports: Charleston (which had a population of 20,000), Baltimore
View of Cincinnati, 1835, Museum of Fine
(26,000), Philadelphia (70,000), New York (60,000), and Boston (25,000). Each had
Arts, Boston.)
a distinctive regional identity.
John Casper Wild (American, about 1804–1846), Cincinnati,
Ohio, about 1835. Watercolor and gouache with highlights in Charleston, South Carolina, was the South’s premier port. In colonial days,
white on paper, Image: 48.4 ⫻ 68.4 cm (19 1⁄16 ⫻ 26 15⁄16 in.), Charleston had grown rich on its links with the British West Indies and on trade with
Sheet: 50.8 ⫻ 70.2 cm (20 ⫻ 27 5/8 in.) Courtesy, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. The M. and M. Karolik Collection England in rice, long-staple cotton, and indigo. The social center for the great low-
of American Watercolors, Drawings, and Prints, 1800–1875. country plantation owners, Charleston was a multiracial city of whites, African
Reproduced with permission. Photograph © 2006 Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston. All Rights Reserved.
Americans (2,000 of them free), Indian peoples, and the mixed-race offspring of
these three groups. One was as likely to hear French, Spanish, or Gullah and Geeche
(African-based dialects of low-country slaves) as English. This graceful, elegant city
was a center for the slave trade until 1808.
Baltimore was the major port for the tobacco of the Chesapeake Bay region
and thus was connected with the slave-owning aristocracy of the Upper South. But
proximity to the wheat-growing regions of the Pennsylvania backcountry increas-
ingly inclined the city’s merchants to look westward and to consider ways to tap the
trade of the burgeoning Ohio country.
Philadelphia, William Penn’s “City of Brotherly Love,” was distinguished by the
commercial and banking skills of Quaker merchants. These merchants had built
international trade networks for shipping the farm produce of Pennsylvania’s German
farmers. Philadelphia served as the nation’s capital in the 1790s, and was acknowl-
edged as its cultural and intellectual leader as well.
New York, still faintly Dutch in architecture and social customs, was soon to out-
grow all the other cities. New York merchants were exceptionally aggressive in their
pursuit of trade. Unlike their counterparts in Philadelphia and Boston, New Yorkers
accepted the British auction system, which cut out the middleman and offered goods
in large lots at wholesale prices at open auctions. Increasingly, British imports entered
America through the port of New York. New York’s shipping, banking, insurance, and
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 277
supporting industries boomed, and as early as 1800, a quarter of all American ship-
ping was owned by New York merchants.
Boston, the cockpit of the American Revolution, was also the capital of
Massachusetts. The handsome State House, built on Beacon Hill, reflected the ori-
gins of Boston’s merchant wealth: a carved wooden codfish occupied a place of honor
in the new building. By the late eighteenth century, however, Boston’s commercial
wealth had diversified into shipbuilding, shipping, banking, and insurance.
Though small in population, these Atlantic cities led the nation socially, polit-
ically, and above all economically. In 1800, the merchants in these seaports still pri-
marily looked across the Atlantic to Europe. In the coming half-century, however, it
was the cities that developed the strongest ties with the trans-Appalachian West that
were to thrive.
A National Economy WHAT WERE the most important

n 1800, the United States was a producer of raw materials. The new nation
I
strengths of the American economy
faced the same challenge that developing nations confront today. At the mercy in the early 1800s?
of fluctuating world commodity prices they cannot control, such countries have
great difficulty protecting themselves from economic dominance by stronger, more
established nations. Class Discussion Question 9.3
Cotton and the Economy of the Young Republic

In 1800, the United States was predominantly rural and agricultural. According to Guideline 6.1
the census, 94 of 100 Americans lived in communities of fewer than 2,500 people, and
four of five families farmed the land. Farming families followed centuries-old tradi-
Class Discussion Question 9.8
tions of working with hand tools and draft animals, producing most of their own
Built for speed, the narrow beamed, many-sailed

American clipper ships were the technological
marvel of their age. In 1854, the most famous
clipper ship, Flying Cloud, shown here, made
the voyage from New York to San Francisco
in 89 days.
© Museum of the City of New York/CORBIS.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 278
food and fiber. Crops were grown for subsistence (home use) rather than for sale.
Commodities such as whiskey and hogs (both easy to transport) provided small and
irregular cash incomes or items for barter. As late as 1820, only 20 percent of the
produce of American farms was consumed outside the local community.
In contrast, in the South, plantation agriculture based on enslaved workers was
wholly commercial and international. The demand for cotton was growing rapidly
in response to the boom in the industrial production of textiles in England and
Europe, but extracting the seeds from the fibers of the variety of cotton that grew best
in the southern interior required an enormous investment of labor. The cotton gin,
which mechanized this process, was invented in 1793; soon cotton, and the slave
labor system that produced it, assumed a commanding place in southern life and in
the foreign trade of the United States.
In 1790, however, increasing foreign demand for American goods and services
hardly seemed likely. Trade with Britain, still the biggest customer for American raw
materials, was considerably less than it had been before the Revolution. Britain and
France both excluded Americans from their lucrative West Indian trade and taxed
QUICK REVIEW
American ships with discriminatory duties. It was difficult to be independent in a
The American Economy in 1800
world dominated by great powers.
Predominantly rural.
94 percent of Americans lived Shipping and the Economic Boom
in communities of fewer than 2,500 people.
Despite these restrictions on American commerce, the strong shipping trade begun
Crops were grown for home use rather
than for sale. during the colonial era and centered in the Atlantic ports became a major asset in
the 1790s, when events in Europe provided America with extraordinary opportuni-
ties. The French Revolution, which began in 1789, soon initiated nearly twenty-five
years of warfare between Britain and France. All along the Atlantic
Total Exports
seaboard, urban centers thrived as American ships carried European
goods that could no longer be transported on British ships without dan-
Reexports
120
ger of French attack (and vice versa). Because America was neutral, its
merchants had the legal right to import European goods and promptly
100 reexport them to other European countries. Despite British and French
efforts to prevent the practice (see Chapter 8), reexports amounted to half
Millions of Dollars
80 of the profits in the booming shipping trade (see Figure 9-1).

The vigorous international shipping trade had dramatic effects
60 within the United States. The coastal cities all grew substantially from
1790 to 1820. This rapid urbanization was a sign of real economic growth
40 (rather than a sign that poverty was pushing rural workers off the farms,
as occurs in some developing countries today), for it reflected expanding
20
opportunities in the cities. In fact, the rapid growth of cities stimulated
0
farmers to produce the food to feed the new urban dwellers.
The long series of European wars also allowed enterprising Americans
1790 1795 1800 1805 1810 1815
Year
to seize lucrative international opportunities such as the China trade. In
1784, the Empress of China set sail from New York for Canton with forty tons
of ginseng. When it returned in 1785 with a cargo of teas, silks, and chi-
FIGURE 9-1
American Export Trade, 1790–1815 This graph shows how completely naware, the sponsors of the voyage made a 30 percent profit. Other mer-
the American shipping boom was tied to European events. Exports, chants were quick to follow. In 1787, Robert Gray left Boston in the
half of which were reexports, surged when Britain and France were Columbia, sailing south around Cape Horn, then north to the Pacific
at war and America could take advantage of its status as neutral. Northwest, where he bought sea otter skins cheaply from the coastal Indians.
Exports slumped in the brief period of European peace in 1803–1805
Then Gray sailed west across the Pacific to China, where he sold the furs
and plunged following the Embargo Act of 1807 and the outbreak
of the War of 1812.
at fabulous profits before rounding the Cape of Good Hope and return-
Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (New York:
ing to Boston laden with tea. In his second voyage in 1792, Gray discovered
Norton, 1966), p. 26. the mouth of a major Northwest river, which he named for his ship. (When
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 279
Lewis and Clark ventured west in 1804, part of their task was to chart the exact path QUICK REVIEW
of Gray’s “Columbia’s River.”) Soon New England so dominated the seaborne trade Growth of American Trade: 1793–1807
in furs to China that the Pacific Northwest Indians called all Americans “Bostons.” French Revolution initiated renewed
The active American participation in international trade fostered a strong and period of warfare between France
diversified shipbuilding industry. All the major Atlantic ports boasted expanding and Britain.
American merchants wanted to supply
shipbuilding enterprises. Demands for speed increased as well, resulting in what
both sides.
many people have regarded as the flower of American shipbuilding, the clipper ship. Expansion of trade led to development
The narrow-hulled, many-sailed clipper ships of the 1840s and 1850s set records for of shipbuilding industry and growth
ships of their size. In 1854, Flying Cloud, built in the Boston shipyards of Donald of coastal cities.
McKay, sailed from New York to San Francisco—a 16,000-mile trip that usually took
150 to 200 days—in a mere 89 days.
The Jefferson Presidency WHAT VALUES were embodied in

t noon on March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson walked from his modest board-
A
agrarian republicanism?
inghouse through the swampy streets of the new federal city of Washington
to the unfinished Capitol. George Washington and John Adams had rid-
den in elaborate carriages to their inaugurals. Jefferson, although accepting a mil-
itary honor guard, demonstrated by his actions that he rejected the elaborate,
quasi-monarchical style of the two Federalist presidents and their (to his mind)
autocratic style of government as well.
For all its lack of pretension, Jefferson’s inauguration as the third president of Guideline 5.5
the United States was a momentous occasion in American history, for it marked the
peaceful transition from one political party, the Federalists, to their hated rivals, the Tall, ungainly, and diffident in manner, Thomas
Jefferson was nonetheless a man of genius,
Jeffersonian Republicans. Beginning in an atmosphere of exceptional political bit-
an architect, naturalist, political philosopher,
terness, Jefferson’s presidency was to demonstrate that a strongly led party system could and politician.
shape national policy without leading to either dictatorship or revolt. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Jefferson’s own moderation may have been the crucial factor: setting a
tone of conciliation in his inaugural address, he announced, “We are
all republicans; we are all federalists” and during his eight years in office
he paid close attention to ways to attract moderate Federalists to the
Jeffersonian Republican Party.
Republican Agrarianism
Jefferson brought to the presidency a clearly defined political philoso-
phy. Behind all the events of his administration (1801–09) and those of
his successors, in what became known as the Virginia Dynasty (James
Madison, 1809–17; James Monroe, 1817–25), was a clear set of beliefs that
embodied Jefferson’s interpretation of the meaning of republicanism for
Americans.
Jefferson’s years as ambassador to France in the 1780s were particu-
larly important in shaping his political thinking. Recoiling from the extremes
of wealth and poverty he saw there, he came to believe that it was impossi-
ble for Europe to achieve a just society that could guarantee to most of its
members the “life, liberty and . . . pursuit of happiness” of which he had
written in the Declaration of Independence. Only America, he believed, pro-
vided fertile earth for the true citizenship necessary to a republican form
of government. What America had, and Europe lacked, was room to grow.
Jefferson’s thinking about growth was directly influenced by
Englishman Thomas Malthus’s deeply pessimistic and widely influential
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 280
Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798. Warning of an impending pop-

ulation explosion, Malthus predicted that unless population growth was checked,
misery and poverty would soon be widespread throughout Europe and even, Malthus
warned, in America. Malthus’s prediction alarmed many Americans, who had taken
pride in having one of the fastest rates of population growth in the world, close to
In this excerpt, Margaret Bayard 40 percent per decade. Thomas Jefferson was not worried. He used Malthus to under-
Smith, the wife of the editor
line the opportunity created by America’s vast land resources. The Malthusian pre-
of the Jeffersonian National
Intelligencer newspaper, comments diction need not trouble the United States, Jefferson said, as long as the country
on Thomas Jefferson’s peaceful kept expanding.
transition into the presidency. Jefferson envisaged a nation of small family farms clustered together in rural
I have this morning witnessed one communities—an agrarian republic. He believed that only a nation of roughly equal
of the most interesting scenes, a free people yeoman farmers, each secure in his own possessions and not dependent on someone
can ever witness. The changes of adminis- else for his livelihood, would exhibit the concern for the community good that was
tration, which in every government and essential in a republic. Indeed, Jefferson said that “those who labor in the earth are
in every age have most generally been epochs
the chosen people of God,” and so he viewed himself, though his “farm” was the
of confusion, villainy and bloodshed,
in this our happy country take place with- large slave-owning plantation of Monticello.
out any species of distraction, or disorder. Jefferson’s vision of an expanding agrarian republic remains to this day one
of our most compelling ideas about America’s uniqueness and special destiny. But
expansionism contained some negative aspects. The lure of the western lands fos-
tered constant mobility and dissatisfaction rather than the stable, settled commu-
nities of yeoman farmers that Jefferson envisaged. Expansionism caused
Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural environmental damage, in particular soil exhaustion—a consequence of abandon-
Address (1801) ing old lands, rather than conserving them, and moving on to new ones. Jefferson’s
expansionism encouraged the spread of plantations based on slave labor in the
South (see Chapter 10). Finally, it bred a ruthlessness toward Indian peoples, who
were pushed out of the way for white settlement or who, like the Mandans, were dev-
Margaret Bayard Smith,
Reflections Upon Meeting astated by the diseases that accompanied European trade and contact. Jefferson’s
Jefferson (1801) agrarianism thus bred some of the best and some of the worst traits of the devel-
oping nation.
Jefferson’s Government
Thomas Jefferson came to office determined to reverse the Federalist policies of the
Class Discussion Question 9.4 1790s and to ensure an agrarian “republic of virtue.” Accordingly, he proposed a
program of “simplicity and frugality,” promising to cut all internal taxes, to reduce
Lecture Suggestion 9.2, Domestic the size of the army (from 4,000 to 2,500 men), the navy (from twenty-five ships to
Policies of the Two Parties seven), and the government staff, and to eliminate the entire national debt inherited
from the Federalists. He kept all of these promises, even the last, though the
Louisiana Purchase of 1803 cost the Treasury $15 million. This diminishment of gov-
ernment was a key matter of republican principle to Jefferson. If his ideal yeoman
farmer was to be a truly self-governing citizen, the federal government must not,
Lecture Suggestion 9.3 Jefferson’s Jefferson believed, be either large or powerful. His cost-cutting measures simply car-
Philosophy of Government
ried out the pledge he had made in his inaugural address for “a wise and frugal gov-
ernment, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [and] shall leave them
otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits.”
Constitutionality of the Louisiana Perhaps one reason for Jefferson’s success was that the federal government he
Purchase (1803)
headed was small and unimportant by today’s standards. For instance, Jefferson found
only 130 federal officials in Washington (a grand total of nine in the State Department,
including the secretary of state). The national government’s main service to ordinary
people was mail delivery, and already in 1800 there were persistent complaints about
Guideline 7.2 slowness, unreliability, and expense in the postal service! Everything else—law and
order, education, welfare, road maintenance, economic control—rested with state or
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 281
local governments. Power and political loyalty were

still local, not national.
This small national government also explains
why for years, the nation’s capital was so unim-
pressive. The French designer Pierre L’Enfant had
laid out a magnificent plan of broad streets and
sweeping vistas reminiscent of Paris. Congress had
planned to pay for the grand buildings with money
from land sales in the new city, but few people
besides politicians and boardinghouse keepers (a
largely female occupation) chose to live in
Washington. Construction lagged: the President’s
House lacked a staircase to the second floor until
1808, and although the House and Senate cham-
bers were soon completed, the central portion of
the Capitol was missing. Instead of the imposing
dome we know so well today, the early Capitol con-
sisted of two white marble boxes connected by a Thomas Jefferson designed and supervised every
boardwalk. It is a telling indicator of the true location of national power that a peo- aspect of the building and furnishing
of Monticello, his classical home atop a hill near
ple who had no trouble building new local communities across the continent should
Charlottesville, Virginia. The process took almost
have had such difficulty establishing their federal city. forty years (from 1770 to 1809), for Jefferson
constantly changed and refined his design,
An Independent Judiciary subjecting both himself and his family to years
Although determined to reverse Federalist fiscal policies, Jefferson was much more of uncomfortable living in the partially completed
moderate concerning Federalist officeholders. He resisted demands by other structure. The result, however, was one
of the most civilized— and most
Jeffersonian Republicans that “the board should be swept” and all Federalist office-
autobiographical—houses ever built.
holders replaced with party loyalists. During his term of office, Jefferson allowed Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
132 Federalists to remain at their posts, while placing Jeffersonian Republicans in
158 other posts. Jefferson’s restraint, however, did not extend to the most notorious
Federalist appointees, the so-called midnight judges.
In the last days of the Adams administration, the Federalist-dominated Congress QUICK REVIEW
passed several acts that created new judgeships and other positions within the fed-
Marbury v. Madison (1803)
eral judiciary. Jeffersonian Republicans feared that the losing Federalist Party was
Case sparked by Jefferson’s refusal
trying to politicize the judiciary by appointing Federalists who would use their posi- to recognize Adam’s “midnight judges.”
tions to strengthen the powers of the federal government, a policy the Jeffersonians Justice Marshall ruled that the duty
opposed. In one of his last acts in office, President Adams appointed Federalists— of the courts was “to say what the law is.”
quickly dubbed the “midnight judges”—to these new positions. William Marbury, Ruling made the Supreme Court a
whom President Adams had appointed Justice of the Peace for Washington, D.C., and powerful nationalizing force.
three other appointees sued James Madison, Jefferson’s secretary of state, to receive
their commissions for their offices. Before the case came to trial, however, Congress,
Audio-Visual Aid, “Monticello: Home
controlled by Jeffersonian Republicans, repealed the acts. This case, Marbury v. of Thomas Jefferson”
Madison, provoked a landmark decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue was a fundamental constitutional point: Was the judiciary indepen-
Opinion of the Supreme Court for
dent of politics? In his celebrated 1803 decision in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Marbury v. Madison (1803)
Justice John Marshall, a strong Federalist and an Adams appointee, managed to
find a way to please both parties. On the one hand, Marshall proclaimed that the
courts had a duty “to say what the law is,” thus unequivocally defending the inde-
pendence of the judiciary and the principle of judicial review. On the other hand,
Marbury v. Madison Supreme Court deci-
Marshall conceded that the Supreme Court was not empowered by the Constitution sion of 1803 that created the precedent
to force the executive branch to give Marbury his commission. At first glance, of judicial review by ruling as unconstitu-
Jefferson’s government appeared to have won the battle over Adams’s last-minute tional part of the Judiciary Act of 1789.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 282
appointees. But in the long run, Marshall established the principle that only
the federal judiciary could decide what was constitutional. This was a vital
step in realizing the three-way balance of power among the branches of the
federal government—executive (president), legislative (Congress), and
judiciary (courts)—envisaged in the Constitution. Equally important,
during his long tenure in office (1801–35), Chief Justice Marshall
consistently led the Supreme Court in a series of decisions that
favored the federal government over state governments. Under
Marshall’s direction, the Supreme Court became a powerful
nationalizing force, often to the dismay of defenders of states’
rights, Jefferson’s Republicans among them.
Opportunity: The Louisiana Purchase

In 1800, the United States was a new and fragile democracy in a
world dominated by two contending great powers: Britain and
France. In 1799, the young general Napoleon Bonaparte seized con-
trol of France and began a career of military conquests. Great Britain
promptly went to war against him. Following one year of peace, Britain
and France were again at war in 1803, beginning a twelve-year duel that
ended only with Napoleon’s defeat at the battle of Waterloo in 1815. Once
again, Europe was a battleground. America was protected, not by its own mili-
tary might, which was puny compared to that of the great powers, but by the dis-
This symbol of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting
tance from the fighting provided by the Atlantic Ocean. If England and France fought
Agriculture illustrates the principles of republican
agrarianism. The yeoman farmer is ploughing his
in North America, as they had in the Seven Years’ War (see Chapter 6), America’s
field under the approving gaze of the female figure national security would be directly threatened. Jefferson, who had once ardently sup-
of Columbia. His activity expresses the values ported the goals of the French Revolution, viewed Napoleon’s ambitions with increas-
of the American republic that she represents and ing apprehension. He feared a resumption of the political animosity of the 1790s, when
in which Thomas Jefferson so strongly believed. Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans had so bitterly disagreed on policy toward
As he said, “Those who labor in the earth are
France (see Chapter 8).
the chosen people of God.”
Library of Congress.
As had his predecessors, Napoleon considered North America a potential
battleground on which to fight the British. He looked first at the Caribbean where
he planned to reconquer Haiti, the world’s first independent black nation, reenslave
its people, and use the rich profits from sugar to finance his European wars. As a
first step, in 1800, France secretly reacquired the Louisiana Territory, the vast west-
ern drainage of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, from Spain, which had held the
In this excerpt of Supreme Court region since 1763. Napoleon planned to use Louisiana to grow food for sugar-
Chief Justice Marshall’s monumental producing Haiti (once it was reconquered), to act as a counterpoise to the British in
decision in the case of Marbury v. Canada, and to check any American expansion that might threaten Spain’s North
Madison, he eloquently demonstrates American colonies. In 1802, he launched the plan by sending an army of 30,000 to
the authority of the Court
reconquer Haiti.
to determine the constitutionality
of matters brought before the Court. In 1801, when President Jefferson first learned of the French–Spanish secret
agreement about Louisiana, he was alarmed. He did not oppose the attack on the lib-
The Constitution vests the whole judicial
erty of independent black Haiti, but he was concerned about the threat to American
power of the United States in one Supreme
Court, and such inferior courts as Congress commerce on the Mississippi River. In fact, in 1802, the Spanish commander at New
shall, from time to time, ordain and Orleans (the French had not yet taken formal control) closed the port to American
establish. . . . The authority, therefore, shippers, thus disrupting commerce as far away as Cincinnati. As Jefferson feared,
given to the Supreme Court, by the Act Federalists in Congress clamored for military action to reopen the port.
establishing the judicial courts of the United
In the summer of 1802, Jefferson instructed Robert Livingston, the American
States, to issue writs of mandamus to public
officers, appears not to be warranted
ambassador to France, to negotiate to buy New Orleans and the surrounding area
by the Constitution . . . for $2 million (or up to $10 million, if necessary). The initial bargaining was not
promising, but suddenly, in early 1803, Napoleon was ready to sell. His army of
30,000 men had been forced to withdraw from Haiti, defeated by yellow fever and
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 283
by an army of former slaves led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. Expecting the British to

declare war against him again, and in need of money for European military cam-
paigns, Napoleon suddenly offered the entire Louisiana Territory, including the cru-
cial port of New Orleans, to the Americans for $15 million. In an age when it took
at least two months for messages to cross the Atlantic, special American envoy
In this excerpt, President Thomas
James Monroe and Ambassador Livingston could not wait to consult Jefferson. Jefferson writes to John C.
They seized the opportunity: they bought the entire Louisiana Territory from Breckinridge in regard
Napoleon in Paris in April 1803. President Jefferson first learned the news two to the constitutionality of annexing
months later, on July 3, the eve of Independence Day. Overnight, the size of the the Louisiana Territory.
United States more than doubled. It was the largest peaceful acquisition of terri- This treaty must of course be laid before
tory in U.S. history. both Houses . . . They, I presume, will see
At home, Jefferson suffered brief qualms. The Constitution did not authorize their duty to their country in ratifying &
paying for it, so as to secure a good
the president to purchase territory, and Jefferson had always rigidly insisted on a
which would otherwise probably be never
limited interpretation of executive rights. But he had also long held a sense of des- again in their power. But I suppose they
tiny about the West and had planned the Lewis and Clark expedition before the must then appeal to the nation for an
Louisiana Purchase was a reality. In any case, the prize was too rich to pass up. Jefferson additional article to the Constitution,
now argued that Louisiana was vital to the nation’s republican future. “By enlarging approving & confirming an act which
the empire of liberty,” Jefferson wrote, “we . . . provide new sources of renovation, the nation had not previously authorized.
The constitution has made no provision
should its principles, at any time, degenerate, in those portions of our country which
for our holding foreign territory, still less
gave them birth.” In other words, expansion was essential to liberty. But for African for incorporating foreign nations into
American slaves and Native Americans, the Louisiana Purchase simply increased the our Union.
scope of their enslavement and destruction. By 1850, four of the six states in the
Louisiana Purchase had entered the Union as slave states (see Chapter 10), and
Indian Territory, envisaged by Jefferson as a distant refuge for beleaguered eastern
Indian peoples, was surrounded by new settlements (see Chapter 15). No matter
how noble Jefferson’s rhetoric, neither African Americans nor American Indians
shared in his “empire of liberty” (see Map 9-2).
Incorporating Louisiana
The immediate issue following the Louisiana Purchase was how to treat the French
and Spanish inhabitants of the Louisiana Territory. In 1803, when the region that is
now the state of Louisiana became American property, it had a racially and ethnically
diverse population of 43,000 people, of whom only 6,000 were American. French
and French-speaking people were numerically and culturally dominant, especially in
the city of New Orleans. New Orleans itself had a population of about 8,000, half
white and half black. Two-thirds of the black population were slaves; the remainder
were “free persons of color,” who under French law enjoyed legal rights equal to
those of white people. The white population was a mixture of French people of
European and West Indian origin. Among them were French-speaking exiles from
Acadia, who became known in New Orleans as Cajuns (see Chapters 6 and 8). But
there were also Spanish, Germans, English, Irish, Americans, and native-born creoles
(persons of French descent), causing one observer to call the community “a verita-
ble tower of Babel.”
Many people thought that the only way to deal with a population so “foreign”
was to wipe out its customs and laws and to impose American ones as quickly as pos-
sible. But the French forestalled this outcome by insisting, in the final treaty, that
the inhabitants of Louisiana not only should be given the “rights, advantages and
immunities of [American] citizens” as soon as possible, but that “in the mean time
they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, prop-
erty and the Religion which they profess.” Consequently, the incorporation of
Louisiana into the American federal system became a remarkable story of adaptation
between two different communities—American and French.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 284
To explore this map further, go to www.myhistorylab.com
RUS S I AN
Hudson
AME RI CA
Bay
B
R I
T I
R O
S H
N O A
C K
R T H A M E R I C
Fort Clatsop NEW HAMPSHIRE
uperio
L. S
Y
winter quarters OR E GON r

1805-06 Mandan Villages VERMONT MAINE
R. L. H (part of
Columbia Mi
M
winter quarters ss
L. Michigan
iss Mass.)
ur
1804-05 ip p
iR
on
C OUNT RY
O
L. Ontario
MASSACHUSETTS
.
Misso NEW YORK
U
u e
ri
L. E RHODE ISLAND
ri
N
R.
PENNSYLVANIA CONNECTICUT
INDIANA
T
OHIO NEW JERSEY

A
I TERRITORY Oh
Fort Ross (Russian 1812) N St. Louis
io R.
DELAWARE
S
R.
o VIRGINIA
San Francisco ad MARYLAND
lor KENTUCKY
Co L O U IS IA N A
NORTH
de
Santa Fé PURCHASE TENNESSEE CAROLINA

n
Gra
R.
Mississippi
1803 SOUTH ATLANTIC
Rio
Los Angeles MISSISSIPPI CAROLINA

TERRITORY
S PA N I S H GEORGIA OCEAN
Nacogdoches Natchez
TERRITORY St. Augustine
San Antonio
de Bejar New Orleans
SPANISH
PACIFIC GULF OF MEXICO FLORIDA
OCEAN
Louisiana Purchase
Route of Lewis and Clark
MAP 9-2
Louisiana Purchase The Louisiana Purchase of 1803, the largest peaceful acquisition of territory in U.S. history, more than dou-
bled the size of the nation. The Lewis and Clark expedition (1804–06) was the first to survey and document the natural and
human richness of the area. The American sense of expansiveness and continental
destiny owes more to the extraordinary opportunity provided by the Louisiana Purchase than to other factors.
HOW DID the terrain of the Lewis and Clark expedition influence the routes of the journey?
Map 9-2 The effort of mutual adaptation was difficult for both sides. At a public ball
Lewis and Clark began their journey at held in New Orleans in January 1804, for example, American and French military offi-
the city of St. Louis. The expedition began cers almost came to blows over whether an English country dance or a French waltz
its westward journey along the Missouri
River and through the Rocky Mountains.
would be played first. Officials in Washington dismissed the reported conflict as a mere
The expedition then utilized the path frivolity, but the U.S. representative in New Orleans and governor of Lower Louisiana
of the Columbia River as a guide West Territory, William Claiborne, did not. Over the next four years, Claiborne came to
to the Pacific Ocean, at Fort Clatsop. accept the value of French institutions to the region. As a result, with Claiborne’s
The waterways provided the expedition full support, Louisiana adopted a legal code in 1808 that was based on French civil
with resources and a current guide
law rather than English common law. This was not a small concession. French law dif-
to the mouth of the Pacific Ocean.
fered from English law in many fundamental respects, such as in family property
(communal versus male ownership), in inheritance (forced heirship versus free dis-
posal), and even in contracts, which were much more strictly regulated in the French
system. Remnants of the French legal system remain part of Louisiana state law to this
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 285
day. In 1812, with the required 60,000 free inhabitants, Louisiana was admitted to the Out of Class Activity 9.1, Lewis and Clark
Union, becoming the first slave state in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase. New Journals
Orleans remained for years a distinctively French city, illustrating the flexibility pos-
sible under a federal system.
Texas and the Struggle for Mexican Independence

Spain objected, in vain, to Napoleon’s 1803 sale of Louisiana to America. For years,
Spain had attempted to seal off its rich colony of Mexico from commerce with other
nations. Now, American Louisiana shared a vague and disputed boundary with
Mexico’s northern province of Texas (a parcel of land already coveted by some
Americans).
Soon Napoleon brought turmoil to all of Mexico. In 1808, having invaded
Spain, he installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king, forcing Spain’s king,
Charles IV, to renounce his throne. For the next six years, as warfare convulsed
Spain, the country’s long-prized New World empire slipped away. Mexico, divided
between royalists loyal to Spain and populists seeking social and economic justice
for mestizos and Indians, edged bloodily toward independence. Two populist
revolts—one in 1810 led by Father Miguel Hidalgo and the other in 1813 led by
Father José María Morelos—were suppressed by the royalists, who executed both rev-
olutionary leaders. In 1812, a small force, led by Mexican republican Bernardo
Gutiérrez but composed mostly of American adventurers, invaded Texas, captured
San Antonio, assassinated the provincial governor Manuel Salcedo, and declared
Texas independent. A year later, however, the Mexican republicans were defeated
by a royalist army, which then killed suspected collaborators and pillaged the province
so thoroughly that the local economy was devastated. The Mexican population
declined to fewer than 2,000. Under these circumstances, Mexico’s difficult path
toward independence seemed, at least to some Americans, to offer yet another
opportunity for expansion.
Renewed Imperial Rivalry WHAT FACTORS led to conflict

in North America between the United States and Britain in
North America?
resh from the triumph of the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson scored a major
F victory over the Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in the presidential

election of 1804, garnering 162 electoral votes to Pinckney’s 14. Jefferson’s
shrewd wooing of moderate Federalists had been so successful that the remaining
Federalists dwindled to a highly principled but sectional group, unable to attract vot-
ers outside of its home base in New England. Jefferson’s Louisiana success was not
repeated, however, and few other consequences of the ongoing struggle between
Britain and France were so easy to solve. Guideline 5.5
Problems with Neutral Rights
In his first inaugural address in 1801, Jefferson had announced a foreign policy of Class Discussion Question 9.6
“peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances
with none.” This was a difficult policy to pursue after 1803, when the Napoleonic
Wars resumed. By 1805, Napoleon had conquered most of Europe, but Britain,
the victor at the great naval battle of Trafalgar, controlled the seas. The United
States, trying to profit from trade with both countries, was caught in the middle.
The British did not look kindly as their former colonists tried to evade their block-
ade of the French by claiming neutrality. Beginning in 1805, the British targeted
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 286
the American reexport trade between the French West Indies and France by seiz-
ing American ships that were bringing French West Indian goods to Europe. Angry
Americans viewed these seizures as violations of their rights as shippers of a neu-
tral nation.
An even more contentious issue arose from the substantial desertion rate of
British sailors. Many deserters promptly signed up on American ships, where they drew
better pay and sometimes obtained false naturalization papers as well. The numbers
involved were large: as many as a quarter of the 100,000 seamen on American ships
were British. Soon the British were stopping American merchant vessels and remov-
ing any man they believed to be British, regardless of his papers. The British refusal
to recognize genuine naturalization papers (on the principle “once a British sub-
ject, always a British subject”) was particularly insulting to the new American sense
of nationhood.
At least 6,000 innocent American citizens suffered forced impressment into
the British navy from 1803 to 1812. In 1807, impressment turned bloody when
the British ship Leopard stopped the American ship Chesapeake in American terri-
torial waters and demanded to search for deserters. When the American captain
refused, the Leopard opened fire, killing three men, wounding eighteen, and
removing four deserters (three with American naturalization papers) from the
damaged ship. An indignant public protested British interference and the death
of innocent sailors.
QUICK REVIEW The Embargo Act

Embargo Act (1807) Fully aware that commerce was essential to the new nation, Jefferson was determined
Forbade American ships from sailing to insist on America’s right as a neutral nation to ship goods to Europe. He first tried
to foreign ports.
diplomatic protests, then negotiations, and finally threats, all to no avail. In 1806,
Intended to force Britain and France
to recognize neutral rights.
Congress passed the Non-Importation Act, hoping that a boycott of British goods,
The act was an economic disaster which had worked so well during the Revolutionary War, would be effective once
for the United States. again. It was not. Finally, in desperation, Jefferson imposed the Embargo Act in
December 1807. This act forbade American ships from sailing to any foreign port,
thereby cutting off all exports as well as imports. The intent of the act was to force
both Britain and France to recognize neutral rights by depriving them of American-
shipped raw materials.
But the results were a disaster for American trade. The commerce of the new
nation, which Jefferson himself had done so much to promote, came to a standstill.
Exports fell from $108 million in 1807 to $22 million in 1808, and the nation was dri-
ven into a deep depression. There was widespread evasion of the embargo. A remark-
able number of ships in the coastal trade found themselves “blown off course” to the
West Indies or Canada. Other ships simply left port illegally. Smuggling flourished.
Pointing out that the American navy’s weakness was due largely to the deep cuts
Jefferson had inflicted on it, the Federalists sprang to life with a campaign of outspo-
ken opposition to Jefferson’s policy, and they found a ready audience in New England,
the area hardest hit by the embargo.
Madison and the Failure of “Peaceable Coercion”

In this troubled atmosphere, Jefferson despondently ended his second term,
acknowledging the failure of what he called “peaceable coercion.” He was followed
in office by his friend and colleague James Madison of Virginia. Although Madison
Embargo Act Act passed by Congress defeated the Federalist candidate—again Charles Cotesworth Pinckney—by
in 1807 prohibiting American ships 122 electoral votes to 47, Pinckney’s share of the votes was three times what it had
from leaving for any foreign port. been in 1804.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 287
Ironically, the Embargo Act had almost no effect on its intended victims. The
French used the embargo as a pretext for seizing American ships, claiming they must
be British ships in disguise. The British, in the absence of American competition, devel-
oped new markets for their goods in South America. And at home, as John Randolph
sarcastically remarked, the embargo was attempting “to cure corns by cutting off the toes.”
In March 1809, Congress admitted failure, and the Embargo Act was repealed. But the
struggle to remain neutral in the confrontation between the European giants contin-
ued. The next two years saw passage of several acts—among them the Non-Intercourse
Act of 1809 and Macon’s Bill Number 2 in 1810—that unsuccessfully attempted to pro-
hibit trade with Britain and France unless they ceased their hostile treatment of U.S. ship-
ping. Frustration with the ineffectiveness of government policy mounted.
A Contradictory Indian Policy

The United States faced other conflicts besides those with Britain and France over
neutral shipping rights. In the West, the powerful Indian nations of the Ohio Valley
were determined to resist the wave of expansion that had carried thousands of white
settlers onto their lands. North of the Ohio River lived the Northwest Confederation
of the Shawnees, Delawares, Miamis, Potawatomis, and several smaller tribes. To the
south of the Ohio were the so-called “Five Civilized Tribes,” the Cherokees, Chickasaws,
Choctaws, Creeks, and (in Florida) the Seminoles.
According to the Indian Intercourse Act of 1790, the United States could not
simply seize Indian land; it could only acquire it when the Indians ceded it by treaty.
But this policy conflicted with the harsh reality of westward expansion. Commonly,
settlers pushed ahead of treaty boundaries. When Indian peoples resisted the inva-
sion of their lands, the pioneers fought back and called for military protection. Defeat
of an Indian people led to further land cessions. The result for the Indians was a
Lecture Suggestion 9.4, Westward
relentless cycle of invasion, resistance, and defeat. Migration from the Indians’ Perspective
Thomas Jefferson was deeply concerned with the fate of the western Indian
peoples. Convinced that Indians had to give up hunting in favor of the yeoman-
farmer lifestyle he so favored for all Americans, Jefferson directed the governors of
the Northwest Territories to “promote energetically” his vision for civilizing the
Indians, which included Christianizing them and teaching them to read. Many Indian
peoples actively resisted these efforts at conversion. In addition, Jefferson’s Indian
civilization plan was never fully supported by territorial governors and settlers. In this excerpt, Red Jacket defends
After the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson offered traditionalist Indian groups his native religion, arguing that the
new lands west of the Mississippi River, where they could live undisturbed by white Americans already have their
country but are not satisfied and now
settlers. But he failed to consider the pace of westward expansion. Less than twenty
want to force their American
years later, Missouri, the first trans-Mississippi state, was admitted to the Union. religious views upon them.
Western Indians like the Mandans, who had seemed so remote, were now threat-
Brother, the Great Spirit has made us all;
ened by further westward expansion.
but he has made a great difference
In fact, Jefferson’s Indian policy, because it did nothing to slow down the ever- between his white and red children . . .
accelerating westward expansion, offered little hope to Indian peoples. The alter- Since he has made so great a difference
natives they faced were stark: acculturation, removal, or extinction. Deprived of between us in other things, why may we
hunting lands, decimated by disease, increasingly dependent on the white economy not conclude that he has given us a
for trade goods and annuity payments in exchange for land cessions, many Indian different religion according to our under-
standing. The Great Spirit does right; he
peoples despaired. Like the Mandans after Lewis and Clark’s visit, they came to dread
knows what is best for his children; we are
the effects of white contact. Nearly every tribe found itself bitterly split between satisfied. Brother, we do not wish to destroy
accommodationists and traditionalists. Some, like groups of Cherokees and associ- your religion, or take it from you; we only
ated tribes in the South, advocated adapting their traditional agricultural lifestyles and want to enjoy our own.
pursuing a pattern of peaceful accommodation. In the Northwest Territory, how-
ever, many Indians chose the path of armed resistance.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 288
Pan-Indian military resistance movement Indian Resistance

Movement calling for the political and
The Shawnees, a seminomadic hunting and farming tribe (the men hunted, the
cultural unification of Indian tribes
in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth women farmed) of the Ohio Valley, had resisted white settlement in Kentucky and
centuries. Ohio since the 1750s. Anthony Wayne’s decisive defeat of the Indian Confederacy led
by Little Turtle at Fallen Timbers (1794) and the continuing pressure of American
settlement, however, had left the Shawnees divided. One group, led by Black Hoof,
Guideline 5.6 accepted acculturation. The rest of the tribe tried to maintain traditional ways. Most
broke into small bands and tried to eke out a living by hunting, but their numbers
were reduced by disease and the survivors were further demoralized by the alcohol
Class Discussion Question 9.7 offered to them illegally by private traders. One group of traditional Shawnees,
however, led by the warrior Tecumseh, sought refuge farther west.
But there was no escape from white encroachment. Between 1801 and 1809,
William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, concluded fifteen treaties
with the Delawares, Potawatomis, Miamis, and other tribes. These treaties opened east-
ern Michigan, southern Indiana, and most of Illinois to white settlement and forced
the Indians onto ever-smaller reservations. Many of these treaties were obtained by
coercion, bribery, and outright trickery, and most Indians did not accept them.
In 1805, Tecumseh’s brother, Tenskwatawa, known as The Prophet, began
preaching a message of Indian revitalization: a rejection of all contact with the
Americans, including the use of American alcohol, clothing, and trade goods, and
a return to traditional practices of hunting and farming. He preached an end to
quarreling, violence, and sexual promiscuity and to the accumulation of private prop-
erty. Wealth was valuable only if it was given away, he said. If the Northwest Indians
returned to traditional ways, Tenskwatawa promised, “the land will be overturned so
that all the white people will be covered and you alone shall inhabit the land.”
This was a powerful message, but it was not new. Just six years earlier, Handsome
This double portrait of two Sauks Indians Lake had led the Seneca people of upstate New York in a similar revitalization move-
by John Wesley Jarvis, painted in 1833, shows ment. Tecumseh, however, succeeded in molding his brother’s religious following into
the growing resistance to official American a powerful pan-Indian military resistance movement. With each new treaty that
Indian policy. The father, Black Hawk, wears Harrison concluded, Tecumseh gained new followers among the Northwest
European dress and appears to have adapted
Confederation tribes. Significantly, he also had the support of the British, who, after
to white ways, while the son, Whirling Thunder,
stubbornly wears traditional garb.
1807, began sending food and guns to him from Canada.
John Wesley Jarvis, Black Hawk and His Son, Whirling Thunder,
The pan-Indian strategy was at first primarily defensive, aimed at preventing fur-
1833. Oil on canvas. 23 1⁄2 ⫻ 30 in. (60.3 ⫻ 76 cm.) Gilcrease ther westward expansion. But the Treaty of Fort Wayne in 1809, in which the United
Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma. 0126.1007.
States gained 3 million acres of Delaware and
Potawatomi land in Indiana, led to active resis-
tance. Confronting Harrison directly, Tecumseh
argued that the land belonged to the larger com-
munity of all the Indian peoples; no one tribe
could give away the common property of all. He
then warned that any surveyors or settlers who ven-
tured into the 3 million acres would risk their lives.
Tecumseh took his message of common
land ownership and military resistance to all the
Indian peoples of the Northwest Confederacy.
He was not uniformly successful, even among
the Shawnees. Black Hoof, for example, refused
to join. Tecumseh also recruited, with mixed suc-
cess, among the tribes south of the Ohio River.
In councils with Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks,
and Cherokees, he promoted active resistance
(see Map 9-3).
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 289
BRITISH N ORTH A M ERICA

1808 Lake
Superior MA IN E
CHIPPEWAS (M as s .)
To CREES and
ASSINIBOINS Sault Ste. Marie
1807 INDIANA
CHIPPEWAS 1808 Fort Michilimackinac Fort Oswegatchie VERMONT
TERRITORY La
NEW
ke
1807 HAMPSHIRE
Hu
an
t ario
ichig
ron
e On Fort Oswego
ILLINOIS
OTTAWAS Lak
MASSACHUSETTS
Lake M
TERRITORY MICHIGAN MISSISAUGAS NEW YORK
1807 TERRITORY Fort The Thames, 1813
Detroit ie RHODE
WINNEBAGOS Er ISLAND
Hamar's Defeat 1813 ke
1790 La
SAUKS Fort Dearborn 1808
Fort P E N N S Y LVA N I A CONNECTICUT
AND FOXES 1812
Wayne Fallen Timbers,1794 NEW
1807 POTAWATOMIS WYANDOTS
MIAMIS
1805 JERSEY
DELAWARES
Misso
Tippecanoe, 1811
IOWAS 1808 St. Clair's Defeat, 1791
Prophetstown
ur
Fort Madison Greenville

INDIANA DELAWARE
iR
1808 KICKAPOOS OHIO

.
TERRITORY
Chillicothe MARYLAND
1810
SHAWNEES
VIRGINIA
St. Louis Vincennes
ILLINOIS
OSAGES
Ohio R. KENTUCKY
d
rlan
be
Cum
NORTH
1811 1812 CAROLINA
QUAPAWS
R.
TENNESSEE
ippi
Fort San CHEROKEES

Fernando
s
ssis
Arka Tennesse
ns a e R. SOUTH
sR
Mi
CAROLINA
.
MI S S I S S I P P I
AT L A N T I C
T E R R I T O RY
CHICKASAWS
GEORGIA
Horseshoe
Bend, 1814
OCEAN
Fort Nogales CREEKS
Fort Natchez
SPAN IS H CHOCTAWS
Fort Mims
M EX IC O 1813
L O UI SI ANA SPANISH
FLORIDA
0 100 200 300 Miles
GULF OF MEXICO 0 100 200 300 Kilometers
SEMINOLES
Ceded before 1784 Spread of The Prophet's influence

Ceded 1784 - 1799 Tecumseh's travel routes
Ceded 1800 - 1812 British fort
Unceded Indian lands, 1812 American fort
Battle Spanish fort
MAP 9-3
Indian Resistance, 1790–1816 American westward expansion put relentless pressure on the Indian nations
in the trans-Appalachian South and West. The trans-Appalachian region was marked by constant warfare from the time
of the earliest settlements in Kentucky in the 1780s to the War of 1812. Tecumseh’s Alliance in the Old Northwest
(1809–11) and the Creek Rebellion in the Old Southwest (1813–14) were the culminating struggles in Indian resistance
to the American invasion of the trans-Appalachian region. Indian resistance was a major reason for the War of 1812.
In November 1811, while Tecumseh was still recruiting among the southern
tribes, Harrison marched to the pan-Indian village of Tippecanoe with 1,000 sol-
diers. The 600 to 700 Indian warriors at the town, urged on by Tenskwatawa, attacked
Harrison’s forces before dawn on November 7, hoping to surprise them. The attack
failed, and in the battle that followed, the Americans inflicted about 150 Indian
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 290
Tecumseh, a Shawnee military leader, and his

brother Tenskwatawa, a religious leader called casualties, while sustaining about as many themselves. Although Harrison claimed
The Prophet, led a pan-Indian revitalization and victory, the truth was far different. Dispersed from Tippecanoe, Tecumseh’s angry
resistance movement that posed a serious threat followers fell on American settlements in Indiana and southern Michigan, killing
to American westward expansion. many pioneers and forcing the rest to flee to fortified towns. Tecumseh himself
(a) The Granger Collection, New York #A93851c. (b) Courtesy
of the Library of Congress.
entered into a formal alliance with the British. For western settlers, the Indian threat
was greater than ever.
WHAT WERE the consequences

The War of 1812
any Westerners blamed the British for Tecumseh’s attacks on pioneer
M
of the War of 1812?
settlements in the Northwest. British support of western Indians and the
long-standing difficulties over neutral shipping rights were the two griev-
ances cited by President Madison when he asked Congress for a declaration of war
Guideline 5.8
against Britain on June 1, 1812. Congress obliged him on June 18. But the war had
other, more general causes as well.
Pennsylvania Gazette, “Indian

The War Hawks
Hostilities” (1812) A rising young generation of political leaders, first elected to Congress in 1810,
strongly resented the continuing influence of Britain, the former mother country, on
American affairs. These War Hawks, who included such future leaders as Henry Clay
of Kentucky and John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, were young Jeffersonian
Republicans from the West and South. They found all aspects of British interference,
such as impressment of sailors and support for western Indians, intolerable. Eager
to assert independence from England once and for all, these young men saw them-
War Hawks Members of Congress,
predominantly from the South and West, selves finishing the job begun by the aging revolutionary generation. They also wanted
who aggressively pushed for a war against to occupy Florida to prevent runaway slaves from seeking refuge with the Seminole
Britain after their election in 1810. Indians. Westerners wanted to invade Canada, hoping thereby to end threats from
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 291
British-backed Indians in the Northwest, such as Tecumseh and his followers. As War of 1812 War fought between
resentments against England and frustrations over border issues merged, the pres- the United States and Britain from
sure for war—always a strong force for national unity—mounted. June 1812, to January 1815 largely over
British restrictions on American shipping.
Unaware that the British, seriously hurt by the American trade embargo, were
about to adopt a more conciliatory policy, President James Madison yielded to the
War Hawks’ clamor for action in June 1812, and his declaration of war passed in the Audio-Visual Aid, “The War of 1812”
U.S. Senate by the close vote of 19 to 13, the House by 79 to 49. All the Federalists
voted against the war. (The division along party lines continued in the 1812 presiden-
tial election, in which Madison garnered 128 electoral votes to 89 for his Federalist
opponent, DeWitt Clinton.) The vote was sectional, with New England and the Middle
States in opposition and the West and South strongly prowar. Thus, the United States
entered the War of 1812 more deeply divided along sectional lines than during any
other foreign war in American history.
As a result of Jefferson’s economizing, the American army and navy were small
and weak. In contrast, the British, fresh from almost ten years of Napoleonic Wars,
were in fighting trim. At sea, the British navy quickly established a strong blockade,
harassing coastal shipping along the Atlantic seaboard and attacking coastal settlements
at will. In the most humiliating attack, the British
burned Washington in the summer of 1814, forc-
ing the president and Congress to flee. Dolley
Madison, the president’s wife, achieved a perma- BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
nent footnote in history by saving a portrait of VERMONT
ke Superior R.
George Washington from the White House as she L a
e
renc
York (Toronto) burned
April 27, 1813 MAINE
fled. The indignity of the burning of Washington M Lake MICHIGAN Lake Lake St.
La
w
(Mass.)
iss Michigan
iss Ontario
was somewhat assuaged in September, when ipp
iR ILLINOIS
TERRITORY Huron Lake Champlain (Plattsburg)
September 11, 1814
Thames River N EW
Americans beat back a British attack on Baltimore
.
TERRITORY Oct. 5, 1813 NEW HAMPSHIRE

Detroit surrendered YOR K
MASSACHUSETTS
and Fort McHenry. Watching the “rockets’ red August 16, 1813 e Er
i e Niagara
Fort Dearborn Lak Falls RHODE ISLAND
glare” in the battle, onlooker Francis Scott Key August 15, 1812
Fort
Put-in-Bay
Wayne
Fort McHenry (Baltimore)
was moved to write the words to the “Star-Spangled Tippecanoe
November 7, 1811
Sept. 10, 1813
September 13-14, 1814
OHIO Washington DC
Banner.” There were a few American naval suc- INDIANA
TERRITORY Ohio
burned NEW JERSEY
Mis R. August 24, 1814
souri R
cesses. The American frigate Constitution, known . DELAWARE
VIRGINIA
KENTUCKY MARYLAND
as “Old Ironsides,” destroyed two British men-of-
NORTH
.
war, the Guerrière and the Java, in classic naval bat-

iR
TENNESSEE CAROLINA
sipp
tles, but these failed to lift the British blockade

ssis
SOUTH ATLANTIC
Mi
M ISSISSIPPI
(see Map 9-4). CAROLINA
TER R ITORY
Horseshoe Bend OCEAN
March 27, 1814 GEORGIA
The Campaigns Against Northern
Fort Mims massacre
and Southern Indians LOUISIANA
August 30, 1813
The American goal of expansion fared badly as well. New Orleans

January 8, 1815 American victory
Americans envisaged a quick victory over sparsely SPANISH
British victory
populated British Canada that would destroy British FLORIDA
GULF OF American offensive
support for Tecumseh and his Northwest Indian MEXICO British offensive
allies, but instead the British–Indian alliance British naval blockade
defeated them. In July 1812, an American foray

into western Canada was repulsed. A joint British MAP 9-4
and Indian force went on, in August, to capture The War of 1812 On land, the War of 1812 was fought to define the nation’s boundaries.
Detroit and Fort Dearborn (site of Chicago). In In the North, American armies attacked British forts in the Great Lakes region with little success,
and the invasion of Canada was a failure. In the South, the Battle of New Orleans made a
September 1813, at the battle of Put-in-Bay,
national hero of Andrew Jackson, but it occurred after the peace treaty had been signed. On
Captain Oliver H. Perry established American the sea, with the exception of Oliver Perry’s victory in the Great Lakes, Britain’s dominance was
control over Lake Erie, leading to the recapture so complete and its blockade so effective that British troops were able to invade the Chesapeake
of Detroit by William Henry Harrison. Assisted by and burn the capital of the United States.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 292
naval forces commanded by Perry, Harrison

defeated British and Indian defenders in the bat-
tle of the Thames in October 1813. Among those
slain in the battle was Tecumseh, fighting on the
British side. Later attempts by the United States to
invade Canada in the Niagara area failed, but so
too did British attempts to invade the United States
in the same area.
One reason for the abortive Canadian inva-
sion, aside from failure to appreciate the strength
of the British–Indian forces, was that the New
England states actively opposed the war.
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut
refused to provide militia or supplies, and other
New England governors turned a blind eye to the
flourishing illegal trade across the U.S.–Canadian
border. Another reason was the reaction of
Canadians themselves, the majority of whom were
former Americans. Ironically, the most decisive
Most of the important battles of the War of 1812 effect of the American attacks was the formation
were fought on the Canadian border, on water as of a Canadian sense of national identity and a determination never to be invaded or
well as on land. This picture celebrates a rare absorbed by the United States.
American naval triumph in the war, the victory
In the South, warfare similar to that waged against Tecumseh’s pan-Indian resis-
of Captain Oliver T. Perry over a British naval
squadron on Lake Erie in September 1813.
tance movement in the Northwest dramatically affected the southern Indian peo-
© Bettman/CORBIS.
ples. The first of the southern Indian peoples to battle the Americans were the Creeks,
a trading nation with a long history of contacts with the Spanish and French. When
white settlers began to occupy Indian lands in northwestern Georgia and central
Alabama early in the nineteenth century, the Creeks, like the Shawnees in the
Northwest, were divided in their response. Although many Creek bands argued for
accommodation, a group known as the Red Sticks were determined to fight. During
the War of 1812, the Red Sticks, allied with the British and Spanish, fought not only
the Americans but other Indian groups.
In August 1813, the Red Sticks attacked Fort Mims on the Alabama River, killing
more than 500 Americans and mixed-race Creeks who had gathered there for safety.
Led by Andrew Jackson, troops from the Tennessee and Kentucky militias combined
with the Creeks’ traditional foes—the Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws—to exact
revenge. Jackson’s troops matched the Creeks in ferocity, shooting the Red Sticks “like
dogs,” one soldier reported. At the battle of Horseshoe Bend in March 1814, the Creeks
were trapped between American cannon fire and their Indian enemies: more than
800 were killed, more than in any other battle in the history of Indian–white warfare.
Lecture Suggestion 9.5, Post-War of 1812
Conflicts At the end of the Creek War in 1814, Jackson demanded huge land conces-
sions from the Creeks (including from some Creek bands that had fought on his
side): 23 million acres, or more than half the Creek domain. The Treaty of Fort
Jackson (1814), confirming these land concessions, earned Jackson his Indian name,
Sharp Knife. In early 1815 (after the peace treaty had been signed but before news
of it arrived in America), Andrew Jackson achieved his best-known victory, an improb-
able win over veteran British troops in the Battle of New Orleans.
Battle of New Orleans Decisive American
War of 1812 victory over British troops
in January 1815 that ended any British
The Hartford Convention
hopes of gaining control of the lower America’s occasional successes failed to diminish the angry opposition of New England
Mississippi River Valley. Federalists to the War of 1812. Opposition to the war culminated in the Hartford
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 293
Convention of 1814, where Federalist representatives from the five New England Nullification A constitutional doctrine
states met to discuss their grievances. At first the air was full of talk of secession from holding that a state has a legal right
the Union, but soon cooler heads prevailed. The convention did insist, however, that to declare a national law null and void
within its borders.
a state had the right “to interpose its authority” to protect its citizens against uncon-
stitutional federal laws. This nullification doctrine was not new; Madison and Jefferson Treaty of Ghent Treaty signed
had proposed it in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves opposing the Alien and in December 1814 between the United
States and Britain that ended the War
Sedition Acts in 1798 (see Chapter 8). In any event, the nullification threat from of 1812.
Hartford was ignored, for peace with Britain was announced as delegates from the
convention made their way to Washington to deliver their message to Congress.
There, the convention’s grievances were treated not as serious business but as an
anticlimactic joke.
The Treaty of Ghent

By 1814, the long Napoleonic Wars in Europe were slowly drawing to a close, and the In this excerpt, Federalists voice
British decided to end their war with the Americans. The peace treaty, after months their opposition and a challenge
of hard negotiation, was signed at Ghent, Belgium, on Christmas Eve in 1814. Like of constitutionality to the Alien and
Sedition Acts.
the war itself, the treaty was inconclusive. The major issues of impressment and neu-
tral rights were not mentioned, but the British did agree to evacuate their western . . . the General Assembly doth particu-
posts, and late in the negotiations they abandoned their insistence on a buffer state larly protest against the palpable and
alarming infractions of the Constitution,
for neutral Indian peoples in the Northwest.
in the two late cases of the “Alien and
For all its international inconsequence, the war did have an important effect Sedition Acts” passed at the last session of
on national morale. Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans allowed Americans to Congress; the first of which exercises a
believe that they had defeated the British. It would be more accurate to say that by power no where delegated to the federal
not losing the war the Americans had ended their own feelings of colonial dependency. government, and which by uniting leg-
islative and judicial powers to those
Equally important, they convinced the British government to stop thinking of America
of executive, subverts the general principles
as its colony. of free government . . .
The War of 1812 was one of America’s most divisive wars, arousing more
intense opposition than any other American conflict, including Vietnam. Today,
most historians regard the war as both unnecessary and a dangerous risk to new and
fragile ideas of national unity. Fortunately for its future, the United States as a whole QUICK REVIEW
came out unscathed, and the Battle of New Orleans provided last-minute balm for
Prelude to War
its hurt pride.
Republican-controlled Congress balked
The only clear losers of the war were the Northwestern Indian nations and their at strengthening military.
southern allies. With the death of Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813 and Divided Congress declared war.
the defeat of the southern Creeks in 1814, the last hope of a united Indian resistance Support for war strongest in the South
to white expansion perished forever. Britain’s abandonment of its Indian allies in the and West.
Treaty of Ghent sealed their fate. By 1815, American settlers were on their way west again.
Defining the Boundaries WHAT ECONOMIC and political

ith the War of 1812 behind them, Americans turned, more seriously
W
problems did the United States face as a new
than ever before, to the tasks of expansion and national development. nation in a world dominated by war between
The so-called Era of Good Feelings (1817–23) found politicians largely Britain and France? How successful were
in agreement on a national agenda, and a string of diplomatic achievements forged
the efforts by the Jefferson, Madison, and
by John Quincy Adams gave the nation sharper definition. But the limits to expan-
Monroe administrations to solve these
sion also became clear: the Panic of 1819 showed the dangers in economic growth,
and the Missouri Crisis laid bare the sectional split that attended westward expansion. problems?
Another Westward Surge

The end of the War of 1812 was followed by a westward surge to the Mississippi River Guideline 5.6
that populated the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin)
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 294
and the Old Southwest (western Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and

Louisiana). The extent of the population redistribution was dramatic: in
1790, about 95 percent of the nation’s population lived in states bordering
the Atlantic Ocean; by 1820, fully 25 percent of the population lived
west of the Appalachians (see Map 9-5).
What accounted for this extraordinary westward surge? There were
both push and pull factors. Between 1800 and 1820, the nation’s popu-
lation almost doubled, increasing from 5.3 million to 9.6 million.
Overpopulated farmland in all of the seaboard states pushed farmers
off the land, while new land pulled them westward. The defeat and
removal of Indians in the War of 1812 was another important pull factor.
The most important pull factor, however, was the attractive price
of western land. The Land Ordinance of 1785 priced western lands too
high for all but speculators and the wealthy (see Chapter 7), but subse-
quent realities had slowly forced Congress to enact land laws more favor-
able to the small farmer. The most sustained challenge came from
“squatters,” who repeatedly took up land before it was officially open
for sale and then claimed a “preemption” right of purchase at a lower
price that reflected the value of improvements they had made to the
land. Congress sought to suppress this illegal settlement and ordered
the expulsion of squatters on several occasions, but to no avail. When fed-
eral lands were officially opened for sale in Illinois in 1814, for example,
there were already 13,000 settlers, forcing Congress to reverse itself and
grant them all preemption rights.
Finally, in the Land Act of 1820, Congress set the price of land at
$1.25 an acre, the minimum purchase at eighty acres (in contrast to the
Settlement of the heavily forested Old Northwest
640-acre minimum in 1785), and a down payment of $100 in cash. This was the most
and Old Southwest required much heavy labor
to clear the land. One common labor-saving liberal land law yet passed in American history, but the cash requirement still favored
method settlers learned from Indians was speculators, who had more cash than most small farmers (see Figure 9-2 on page 296).
to “girdle” the trees (cutting the bark all There were four major migration routes. In upstate New York, the Mohawk
around), thereby killing them. Dead trees could and Genesee Turnpike led New England migrants to Lake Erie, where they traveled
be more easily chopped and burned.
by boat to northern Ohio. In the Middle States region, the turnpike from Philadelphia
Library of Congress.
to Pittsburgh led to the Ohio River, as did the National Road that began in Baltimore
and led to Wheeling. In the South, the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland
Gap led to Kentucky, and passes in the mountains of North and South Carolina led
to Tennessee. The Federal Road skirted the southern edge of the Appalachians and
allowed farmers from South Carolina and eastern Georgia to move directly into
Alabama and Mississippi. In this way, geography facilitated lateral westward move-
ment (northerners tended to migrate to the Old Northwest, southerners to the Old
Southwest). Except in southern Ohio and parts of Kentucky and Tennessee, there was
QUICK REVIEW
very little contact among regional cultures. New Englanders carried their values
Westward Surge, 1800–1820 and lifestyles west and settled largely with their own communities; southerners
By 1820, 25 percent of the population did the same.
lived west of the Appalachians. One section of northern Ohio along Lake Erie, for example, had been
Group settlement was common.
Connecticut’s western land claim since the days of its colonial charter. Rather than
Lure of new land pulled farmers west.
give up the land when the Northwest Territory was established in 1787, Connecticut
held onto the Western Reserve (as it was known) and encouraged its citizens to move
there. Group settlement was common. General Moses Cleaveland of the
Lecture Suggestion 9.1, Westward Revolutionary War led one of the first groups of Yankees, fifty-two in all. In 1795,
Expansion they settled the community that bears his name (though not his spelling of it).
Many other groups followed, naming towns such as Norwalk after those they had
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 295
left in Connecticut. These New Englanders brought to the Western

Reserve their religion (Congregational), their love of learning (tiny BRITISH NORTH AMERICA
NEW
Norwalk soon boasted a three-story academy), and their adamant oppo- HAMPSHIRE
e Superior MAINE
Lak VERMONT
sition to slavery.
La
Western migration in the South was very different. On this frontier, k
eH
Lake Michiga
Mi
the people clearing the land were not doing it for themselves but to cre- tari
o
uron
ss e On
Lak MASSACHUSETTS
iss
NEW YORK
ate plantations for slave owners. Even before the war, plantation owners
ipp
RHODE
i R.
rie ISLAND
in the Natchez district of Mississippi had made fortunes growing cotton, eE
Lak CONNECTICUT
PENNSYLVANIA NEW
which they shipped to Britain from New Orleans. After the war, as cot-
A
JERSEY
AN
OHIO
ton growing expanded, hopeful slave owners from older parts of the DELAWARE
DI
ILLINOIS
N
I MARYLAND
South (Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia) flooded into the M
iss
our
i R. VIRGINIA
region, bringing their slaves with them or, increasingly, purchasing new KENTUCKY
NORTH
ones supplied by the internal slave trade. The migration was like a gold TENNESSEE CAROLINA
rush, characterized by high hopes, land speculation, and riches—for a SOUTH
CAROLINA
few. Most of the white settlers in the Old Southwest were small farm fam- ATLANTIC
I
PP
SI
ilies who did not own slaves, but they hoped to, for ownership of slaves GEORGIA OCEAN
IS
ALABAMA
SS
was the means to wealth. More than half of the migrants to the Old
MI
Southwest after 1812 were involuntary—enslaved African Americans. LOUISIANA
F L O R
I
0 100 200 300 Miles
This involuntary migration of slaves tore African American families apart 0 100 200 300 Kilometers
D
A
at the same time that white families viewed migration as a chance to GUL F O F M E X I C O
replicate the lifestyle and values of older southern states on this new Areas settled by 1800
frontier (see Chapter 10). Areas settled by 1810
The western transplantation of distinctive regional cultures explains Areas settled by 1820
why, although by 1820 western states accounted for more than a third of
all states (eight out of twenty-three), the West did not form a third, uni- MAP 9-5
fied political region. Although there were common western issues—in Spread of Settlement: Westward Surge, 1800–1820 Within a period
particular, the demand for better roads and other transportation routes— of twenty years, a quarter of the nation’s population had moved west
communities in the Old Northwest, in general, shared New England polit- of the Appalachian Mountains. This westward surge was a dynamic
source of American optimism.
ical attitudes, whereas those in the Old Southwest shared southern
attitudes.
The Election of 1816 and the Era of Good Feelings

In 1816, James Monroe, the last of the Virginia Dynasty, was easily elected president
over his Federalist opponent Rufus King (183 to 34 electoral votes). This was the last
election in which Federalists ran a candidate. Monroe had no opponent in 1820 and
was reelected nearly unanimously (231 to 1). The triumph of the Jeffersonian
Republicans over the Federalists seemed complete.
Tall, dignified, dressed in the old-fashioned style of knee breeches and white-
topped boots that Washington had worn, Monroe looked like a traditional figure. But
his politics reflected changing times. When he visited Boston, which was as recently
as 1815 the heart of a secession-minded Federalist region, he received an enthusias-
tic welcome, prompting the Federalist Columbian Centinel to proclaim an “Era of Good
Feelings.” The phrase has been applied to Monroe’s presidency (1817–25) ever since. Era of Good Feelings The period
from 1817 to 1823 in which the disappear-
The American System ance of the Federalists enabled
the Republicans to govern in a spirit
Monroe sought a government of national unity, and he chose men from North and of seemingly nonpartisan harmony.
South, Jeffersonian Republicans and Federalists, for his cabinet. He selected John
American System The program of gov-
Quincy Adams, a former Federalist, as his secretary of state, virtually assuring that
ernment subsidies favored by Henry Clay
Adams, like his father, would become president. To balance Adams, Monroe picked John and his followers to promote American
C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a prominent War Hawk, as secretary of war. And Monroe economic growth and protect domestic
supported the American System, a program of national economic development that manufacturers from foreign competition.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 296
became identified with Westerner Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of

20
Representatives.
20 Million Acres 15 Million Acres
1836 1855 In supporting the American System, Monroe was following
15 President Madison, who had proposed the program in his message to
Millions of Acres
Congress in December 1815. Madison and Monroe broke with

10 Jefferson’s agrarianism to embrace much of the Federalist program for
economic development, including the chartering of a national bank,
5 a tax on imported goods to protect American manufacturers, and a
3.5 Million Acres
1818 national system of roads and canals. All three of these had first been
0
proposed by Alexander Hamilton in the 1790s (see Chapter 8). At the
1800 1820 1840 1860
Year
time, these proposals had met with bitter Jeffersonian Republican
opposition. The support that Madison and Monroe gave to Hamilton’s
ideas following the War of 1812 was a crucial sign of the dynamism of
FIGURE 9-2
Western Land Sales Surges in western land sales reflect surges in west-
the American commercial economy. Many Republicans now acknowl-
ward expansion. Western land sales following the War of 1812 reached edged that the federal government had a role to play in fostering the
an unprecedented 3.5 million acres, but that was small in comparison economic and commercial conditions in which both yeoman farmer
with what was to come in the 1830s and 1850s. Not all land sales and merchant could succeed.
reflected actual settlement, however, and speculation in western lands In 1816, Congress chartered the Second Bank of the United
was rampant. Collapse of the postwar speculative boom contributed
States for twenty years. Located in Philadelphia, the bank had a cap-
to the Panic of 1819, and the abrupt end to the boom of the 1830s
led to the Panic of 1837. ital of $35 million, of which the government contributed $7 million.
Robert Riegel and Robert Athearn, America Moves West (New York: Holt Rinehart 1964). The bank was to provide the large-scale financing that the smaller
state banks could not handle, and to create a strong national currency.
Because they feared concentrated economic power, Jeffersonian Republicans had
allowed the charter of the original Bank of the United States, founded in 1791, to
expire in 1811. The Republican about-face in 1816 was a sign that the strength of com-
mercial interests had grown to rival that of farmers, whose distrust for central banks
persisted.
The Tariff of 1816 was the first substantial protective tariff in American history.
In 1815, British manufacturers, who had been excluded for eight years (from the
Embargo Act of 1807 to the end of the War of 1812), flooded the United States mar-
ket with their products. American manufacturers complained that the British were
dumping goods below cost in order to prevent the growth of American industries.
Congress responded with a tariff on imported woolens and cottons, iron, leather,
hats, paper, and sugar. The measure had southern as well as northern support,
although in later years, differences over the passage of higher tariffs would become
one of the most persistent sources of sectional conflict.
The third item in the American System, funding for roads and canals—inter-
nal improvements, as they came to be known—was more controversial. Monroe and
Madison both supported genuinely national (that is, interstate) projects such as the
National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. Congressmen,
however, aware of the urgent need to improve transportation in general and sensing
the political advantages that could accrue to them from directing funds to their
districts, proposed spending federal money on local projects. Both Madison and
Monroe vetoed such local proposals, believing them to be unconstitutional. Thus it
happened that some of the most famous projects of the day, such as the Erie Canal,
which lay wholly within New York state, and the early railroads, were financed by
state or private money (see Chapter 12).
The support of Madison and Monroe for measures initially identified with their
Second Bank of the United States
A national bank chartered by Congress political opposition was an indicator of their realism. The three aspects of the
in 1816 with extensive regulatory powers American System—bank, tariff, roads—were all parts of the basic infrastructure that
over currency and credit. the American economy needed in order to develop. Briefly, during the Era of Good
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 297
This 1816 painting by Thomas Birch shows two

improvements that aided westward expansion:
the lightweight but sturdy Conestoga wagon that
Feelings, politicians agreed about the need for all three. Later, each would be a made it possible to carry heavy loads for long
source of heated partisan argument. distances, and the improved road—the
Pennsylvania Turnpike—built by a private com-
The Diplomacy of John Quincy Adams pany that charged tolls to cover its cost.
The diplomatic achievements of the Era of Good Feelings were due almost entirely Thomas Birch (1779–1851), Conestoga Wagon on the
Pennsylvania Turnpike, 1816. Oil on canvas, H: 21 1⁄4 in. ⫻
to the efforts of one man, John Quincy Adams, Monroe’s secretary of state. Adams
W: 28 1⁄2 in. © Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT.
set himself the task of tidying up the borders of the United States. Two accords with
Britain—the Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 and the Convention of 1818—fixed the bor-
der between the United States and Canada at the 49th parallel and resolved conflict-
ing U.S. and British claims to Oregon with an agreement to occupy it jointly for ten Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 Treaty
(eventually twenty) years. The American claim to Oregon (present-day British between the United States and Britain that
Columbia, Washington, Oregon, northern Idaho, and parts of Montana) was based effectively demilitarized the Great Lakes
on China trader Robert Gray’s discovery of the Columbia River in 1792 and on the by sharply limiting the number of ships
each power could station on them.
Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–06.
Adams’s major diplomatic accomplishment was the Adams-Onís or Transcontinental Treaty of 1819 Treaty
Transcontinental Treaty of 1819, in which he skillfully wrested concessions from the between the United States and Spain
in which Spain ceded Florida to the United
faltering Spanish empire. Adams convinced Spain not only to cede Florida but also
States, surrendered all claims to the Pacific
to drop all previous claims it had to the Louisiana Territory and Oregon. In return, Northwest, and agreed to a boundary
the United States relinquished claims on Texas and assumed responsibility for the between the Louisiana Purchase territory
$5 million in claims that U.S. citizens had against Spain. and the Spanish Southwest.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 298
Finally, Adams picked his way through the remarkable changes occurring in
Latin America, developing the policy that bears his president’s name, the Monroe
Doctrine. The United States was the first country outside Latin America to recog-
nize the independence of Spain’s former colonies. When the European powers
(France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia) began talk of a plan to help Spain recover the
lost colonies, what was the United States to do? The British, suspicious of the European
powers, proposed a British–American declaration against European intervention in
the hemisphere. Others might have been flattered by an approach from the British
empire, but Adams would have none of it. Showing the national pride that was so char-
acteristic of the era, Adams insisted on an independent American policy. He there-
fore drafted for the president the hemispheric policy that the United States has
followed ever since.
The Monroe Doctrine (1823) On December 2, 1823, the president presented the Monroe Doctrine to
Congress and the world. He called for the end of colonization of the Western
Hemisphere by European nations (this was aimed as much at Russia and its Pacific
coast settlements as at other European powers). Intervention by European powers
in the affairs of the independent New World nations would be considered by the
United States a danger to its own peace and safety. Finally, Monroe pledged that the
United States would not interfere in the affairs of European countries or in the affairs
of their remaining New World colonies.
All of this was a very loud bark from a very small dog. In 1823, the United States
lacked the military and economic force to back up its grand statement. In fact, what
kept the European powers out of Latin America was British opposition to European
intervention, enforced by the Royal Navy. The Monroe Doctrine was however useful
in Adams’s last diplomatic achievement, the Convention of 1824, in which Russia
gave up its claim to the Oregon Territory and accepted 54° 40⬘ north latitude as the
southern border of Russian America. Thus Adams had contained another possible
threat to American continental expansion (see Map 9-6).
In the short space of twenty years, the position of the United States on the
North American continent had been transformed. Not only was America a much
larger nation, but the Spanish presence was much diminished, Russian expansion on
the West coast contained, and peace prevailed with Britain. This string of diplomatic
achievements—the treaties with Russia, Britain, and Spain and the Monroe Doctrine—
represented a great personal triumph for the stubborn, principled John Quincy
Adams. A committed nationalist and expansionist, he showed that reason and diplo-
macy were in some circumstances more effective than force. Adams’s diplomatic
achievements were a fitting end to the period dominated by the Virginia Dynasty,
the trio of enlightened revolutionaries who did so much to shape the new nation.
The Panic of 1819

Guideline 5.8 Across this impressive record of political and economic nation building fell the
shadow of the Panic of 1819. A delayed reaction to the end of the War of 1812 and
the Napoleonic Wars, the panic forced Americans to come to terms with their eco-
nomic place in a peaceful world. As British merchant ships resumed trade on routes
they had abandoned during the wars, the American shipping boom ended. And as
European farm production recovered from the wars, the international demand for
Monroe Doctrine Declaration by President American foodstuffs declined and American farmers and shippers suffered.
James Monroe in 1823 that the Western
Domestic economic conditions made matters worse. The western land boom
Hemisphere was to be closed off to further
European colonization and that that began in 1815 turned into a speculative frenzy. Land sales, which had totaled
the United States would not interfere 1 million acres in 1815, mushroomed to 3.5 million in 1818. Some lands in Mississippi
in the internal affairs of European nations. and Alabama, made valuable by the international demand for cotton, were selling for
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 299
R US S IAN Hudson Labrador

T E R R IT ORY Bay Se a
54 40'
˚ B
R I
T I
S H
N O A
R T H A M E R I C
.
bia R
R O C
lum
49 0'
˚
Co
St. Lawrence R.
uperio
Misso L. S r
O REGO N ur
K Y
VERMONT
MAINE
iR
CO UNTRY Mi L. H (part of
.
ssi
L. Michigan
(U.S. and UNORGANIZED s si Mass.)
ur
pp
on
iR
Great Britain) L. Ontario NEW HAMPSHIRE
M
. MICHIGAN
TERRITORY NEW YORK MASSACHUSETTS
O
TERRITORY L. E
rie
RHODE ISLAND
U
Plat INDIANA
N
te R. OHIO NEW JERSEY

T
ILLINOIS Oh
io R . DELAWARE
A
I St. Louis
Fort Ross R N
.
do Arkansas MISSOURI VIRGINIA MARYLAND

ra S R.
lo TERRITORY KENTUCKY
Co
NORTH
TENNESSEE CAROLINA
ARKANSAS TERRITORY
SOUTH
Red MISSISSIPPI CAROLINA
S PA N I S H R.
ATLANTIC
ALABAMA
PACIFIC GEORGIA
TERRITORY OCEAN
OCEAN LOUISIANA
New Orleans
FLORIDA
Ri
oG
TERRITORY
ran
Adams-Onís Treaty, 1819

de
Rush-Bagot Treaty of 1817 GULF OF MEXICO

and Convention of 1818
Convention of 1824
MAP 9-6
John Quincy Adams’s Border Treaties John Quincy Adams, secretary of state during the Monroe administration
(1817–25), solidified the nation’s boundaries in several treaties with Britain and Spain. The Rush-Bagot Treaty of
1817 and the Conventions of 1818 and 1824 settled the northern boundary with Canada and the terms of a joint
occupancy of Oregon. The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 added Florida to the United States and settled the disputed
border between the American Louisiana Territory and Spanish possessions in the West.
$100 an acre. Many settlers bought on credit, aided by loans from small and irre-
sponsible “wildcat” state banks. This was not the first—or the last—speculative boom
in western lands. But it ended like all the rest—with a sharp contraction of credit,
begun on this occasion by the Second Bank of the United States, which in 1819
forced state banks to foreclose on many bad loans. Many small farmers were ruined,
and they blamed the faraway Bank of the United States for their troubles. In the
1830s, Andrew Jackson would build a political movement on their resentment.
Urban workers suffered both from the decline in international trade and from
manufacturing failures caused by competition from British imports. As they lobbied
for local relief, they found themselves deeply involved in urban politics, where they
could express their resentment against the merchants and owners who had laid them
off. Thus developed another component of Andrew Jackson’s new political coalition.
Another confrontation arose over the tariff. Southern planters, hurt by a decline
in the price of cotton, began to actively protest the protective tariff, which kept the
price of imported goods high even when cotton prices were low. Manufacturers, hurt
by British competition, lobbied for even higher rates, which they achieved in 1824
over southern protests. Southerners then began to express doubts about the fair-
ness of a political system in which they were always outvoted.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 300
The Panic of 1819 was a symbol of this transitional time. It showed how far the
country had moved since 1800, from Jefferson’s republic of yeoman farmers toward
a nation dominated by commerce. And the anger and resentment expressed by the
groups harmed by the depression—farmers, urban workers, and southern planters—
were portents of the politics of the upcoming Jackson era.
The Missouri Compromise

Guideline 5.7 In the Missouri Crisis of 1819–21, the nation confronted the momentous issue that
had been buried in the general enthusiasm for expansion: as America moved west,
would the largely southern system of slavery expand as well? Until 1819, this question
was decided regionally. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 explicitly banned slavery
in the northern section of trans-Appalachia but made no mention of it elsewhere.
Because so much of the expansion into the Old Northwest and Southwest was lateral
(northerners stayed in the North, southerners in the South), there was little conflict
over sectional differences. In 1819, however, the sections collided in Missouri, which
applied for admission to the Union as a slave state (see Map 9-7).
R US S IAN Hudson Labrador

T E R R IT ORY Bay Se a
54 40'
˚ B
R I
T I
S H
N O A
R T H A M E R I C
.
bia R
R O C
lum
Co
St. Lawrence R.
uperio
Misso L. S r
O REGO N ur
K Y
VERMONT
Lake
iR
CO UNTRY Mi L. H MAINE
.
ssi Michigan
(U.S. and UNORGANIZED s si
ur
pp
iR MICHIGAN
on
Great Britain) o
Ontari NEW HAMPSHIRE
M
. L.
TERRITORY NEW YORK MASSACHUSETTS
O
TERRITORY L. E
rie
RHODE ISLAND
U
Plat INDIANA
N
Great te R. OHIO NEW JERSEY

T
Salt Lake ILLINOIS

Washington DC DELAWARE
A
I St. Louis Oh
R N io R .
.
do Arkansas
R. MISSOURI VIRGINIA MARYLAND
lo ra S KENTUCKY
Co
Missouri Compromise Line 36°30'
NORTH
Santa Fé TENNESSEE CAROLINA
ARKANSAS TERRITORY
Los Angeles (1819-36) SOUTH
Red MISSISSIPPI CAROLINA
S PA N I S H R.
ATLANTIC
ALABAMA
PACIFIC Nacogdoches Natchez
GEORGIA
TERRITORY OCEAN
OCEAN San Antonio
LOUISIANA St. Augustine
de Bejar New Orleans
FLORIDA
TERRITORY
Ri
oG
Free states and territories

ran
GULF OF MEXICO
de
Free territory by Missouri Compromise

Slave states and territories
MAP 9-7
The Missouri Compromise Before the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Ohio River was the dividing line between
the free states of the Old Northwest and the slaveholding states of the Old Southwest. The compromise stipulated
that Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state (balanced by Maine, a free state), but slavery would be prohib-
ited in the Louisiana Territory north of 36° 30' (Missouri’s southern boundary). This awkward compromise lasted
until 1846, when the Mexican-American War reopened the issue of the expansion of slavery.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 301
The northern states, all of which had abolished slavery by 1819, looked askance
at the extension of slavery. In addition to the moral issue of slavery, the Missouri
question raised the political issue of sectional balance. Northern politicians did not
want to admit another slave state. To do so would tip the balance of power in the
Senate, where the 1819 count of slave and free states was eleven apiece. For their
part, southerners believed they needed an advantage in the Senate; because of faster
population growth in the North, they were already outnumbered (105 to 81) in the
House of Representatives. But above all, southerners did not believe Congress had
the power to limit the expansion of slavery. They were alarmed that northerners
were considering national legislation on the matter. Slavery, in southern eyes, was a
question of property, and therefore a matter for state rather than federal legislation.
Thus, from the very beginning, the expansion of slavery raised constitutional issues.
Indeed, the aging politician of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson, immediately grasped
the seriousness of the question of the expansion of slavery. As he prophetically wrote
to a friend, “This momentous question like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled
me with terror. I considered it at once the [death] knell of the Union.”
In 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr. of New York began more than a year
of congressional controversy when he demanded that Missouri agree to the gradual
end of slavery as the price of entering the Union. At first, the general public paid lit-
tle attention, but religious reformers (Quakers prominent among them) organized
a number of antislavery rallies in northern cities that made politicians take notice.
Former Federalists in the North who had seen their party destroyed by the achieve-
ments of Jefferson and his successors in the Virginia Dynasty eagerly seized on the
Missouri issue. This was the first time that the growing northern reform impulse had
intersected with sectional politics. It was also the first time that southern threats of
secession were made openly in Congress.
The Senate debate over the admission of Missouri, held in the early months of
1820, was the nation’s first extended debate over slavery. Observers noted the high
proportion of free African Americans among the listeners in the Senate gallery. But
the full realization that the future of slavery was central to the future of the nation
would not become apparent to the general public until the 1850s.
In 1820, Congress achieved compromise over the sectional differences. Henry
Clay forged the first of the many agreements that were to earn him the title of “the
Great Pacificator” (peacemaker). The Missouri Compromise maintained the bal-
ance between free and slave states: Maine (which had been part of Massachusetts)
was admitted as a free state in 1820 and Missouri as a slave state in the following year.
A policy was also enacted with respect to slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase:
slavery was prohibited north of 36° 30⬘ north latitude—the southern boundary of Missouri Compromise Sectional compro-
mise in Congress in 1820 that admitted
Missouri—and permitted south of that line. This meant that the vast majority of the
Missouri to the Union as a slave state and
Louisiana Territory would be free. In reality, then, the Missouri Compromise could Maine as a free state and prohibited slav-
be only a temporary solution, because it left open the question of how the balance ery in the northern Louisiana Purchase
between slave and free states would be maintained. territory.
Conclusion
n complex ways a developing economy, geographical expansion, and even a
I minor war helped shape American unity. Local, small, settled, face-to-face com-
munities in both the North and the South began to send their more mobile,
expectant members to new occupations in urban centers or west to form new settle-
ments, displacing Indian communities in the process.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 302
“A Scene on the Frontiers as

Practiced by the ‘Humane’ British
and their ‘Worthy’ Allies”
his American cartoon, published during the War of 1812, shows a British officer
T paying for a scalp from an Indian, while another man is shown in the act of scalp-
ing a dead American soldier. The cartoon may have been prompted by an actual
event: the offer of bounties for scalps made by British Colonel Proctor at Fort Dearborn
(Chicago) in August 1815. In any case, the car-
DOES IT contribute anything to our historical toon evoked horror at Indian barbarity and
understanding of the reasons for western indignation at the British for using them as
Indian resistance? pawns in the war. Similar charges had been
made against the British and their Indian allies
during the American Revolution.
In reality, Indian resistance in the War of 1812 was different from the earlier war.
The western Indians were not British pawns. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh and other
western Indian groups allied with him claimed that they had been deprived of their lands
by fraudulent treaties and stripped of the ability to maintain their traditional culture.
Tecumseh began organizing resistance long before the outbreak of war between the United
States and Britain. He did accept arms from the British in Canada, and once the war broke
out he formally allied with them and became an officer in their army. By allying with the
British, the Indians hoped to retain
their homelands, but at the peace
negotiations the British failed to
insist on a buffer state for neutral
Indians as they had promised. ■
This cartoon inflamed popular fears of Indians

that existed long before the War of 1812.
Courtesy of the Bostonian Society/Old State House.
302
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 303
CHRONOLOGY
1800 Thomas Jefferson elected president 1814 Treaty of Ghent

1802 Russian–American Company headquarters 1815 Battle of New Orleans
established at Sitka, Alaska
1816 James Monroe elected president
1803 Louisiana Purchase
Congress charters Second Bank of the United States
Marbury v. Madison
Indiana admitted to the Union
Ohio admitted to the Union
1817 Mississippi admitted to the Union
1804 Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis
1818 Illinois admitted to the Union
Thomas Jefferson reelected president
1819 Panic of 1819
1807 Chesapeake–Leopard incident
Adams–Onís Treaty
Embargo Act
Alabama admitted to the Union
1808 James Madison elected president
1819–20 Missouri Crisis and Compromise
1809 Tecumseh forms military alliance among Northwest
1820 James Monroe reelected president
Confederacy peoples
Maine admitted to the Union
1811 Battle of Tippecanoe
1821 Missouri admitted to the Union as a slave state
1812 War of 1812 begins
1823 Monroe Doctrine
James Madison reelected president
Louisiana admitted to the Union
The westward movement was the novel element in the American national QUICK REVIEW
drama. Europeans believed that large size and a population in motion bred insta-
The Missouri Compromise (1819–1820)
bility and political disintegration. Thomas Jefferson thought otherwise, and the
Dealt with the issue of slavery in newly
Louisiana Purchase was the gamble that confirmed his guess. The westward popu-
acquired territory.
lation movement dramatically changed the political landscape and Americans’ view Henry Clay played a key role in reaching
of themselves. compromise.
Expansion would not create the settled communities of yeoman farmers Maine entered union as a free state,
Jefferson had hoped for. Rather, it would breed a nation of restless and acquisitive Missouri as a slave state.
people and, in the South, as we shall see in the next chapter, a greatly expanded Slavery was prohibited north of 36° 30⬘
north latitude.
community tied to cotton and to the slave labor that produced it.
DOCUMENT-BASED QUESTION Suggested Answer:

Successful essays should note:
Directions: This exercise requires you to construct a valid essay that directly
• The definition of agrarian republicanism
addresses the central issues of the following question. You will have to use facts and Jefferson’s belief about necessary
from the documents provided and from the chapter to prove the position you take foundations for a republican form
in your thesis statement. of government (p. 279–280)
When Thomas Jefferson entered the White House in 1800, he had • Comparisons and differences between
frontier settlements in the Old Northwest
a clearly defined idea of what form the American nation should
and the Old Southwest to the estab-
take. This concept was called agrarian republicanism. By the time lished farming communities in the East
Jefferson died in 1826, he was filled with fears for the survival of (Images p. 294, 330, and 384 and
his country. Define agrarian republicanism and identify the issues Document A)
and forces that threatened its survival by 1826.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 304
• The ideals and characteristics that Document A

Jefferson expected of society, people,
Examine the painting below of the Salem, North Carolina, farm in 1787 that
and government in an agrarian republic
(p. 279–281 and Document A)
belonged to an independent farmer, as well as the discussion of Jefferson’s beliefs
• The driving forces behind the Tallmadge about necessary foundations for a republican form of government (on
amendment and Missouri’s petition pages 279–280). Contrast this to the image of frontier settlers in the Old
for statehood (p. 301 and Document B) Northwest and the Old Southwest shown on page 294. Now turn to von Iwonski’s
• The threat that the Tallmadge amend- idyllic painting of a yeoman farm in Texas (page 330) and then Hicks’ painting
ment would have upon Jefferson’s of his childhood farm on page 384. These are the images of the kinds of self-
agrarian republic (Document B) sufficient, independent farmers that Jefferson had in mind.
• The Missouri Compromise and
the implications that a now divided • What were the characteristics of the people that Jefferson felt would inhabit an agrarian republic?
nation, one slave and one free, foretold • What were the characteristics he expected of such a nation’s government and society?
for the future of the agrarian republic
that Jefferson helped establish
(Map 9-7 and Document C)
• The forces within the issues
of the Missouri Compromise threatening
Jefferson’s agrarian republic
(p. 300–301 and Document D)
Ludwig Goettfried von Redeken. A View of Salem in North Carolina, 1787. Collection of the Wachovia Historical Society.
Document B
And provided, That the further introduction of slavery or involuntary
servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof
the party shall have been fully[duly] convicted; and that all children born
within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be
free at the age of twenty-five years.
—John Tallmadge, February 13, 1820
• What forces or motivations were behind John Tallmadge’s amendment to the Missouri petition
for statehood?
• Why would the Tallmadge amendment threaten the survival of that agrarian republic Jefferson
had fought to establish?
Document C
Examine the map of the Missouri Compromise shown on page 300. The
Tallmadge amendment given in Document B was introduced by a New York con-
gressman who was opposed to slavery. It set off the political debate that ended in
the Missouri Compromise. The Tallmadge amendment failed, but notice how the
Missouri Compromise line has now divided the nation into two sections, one free
and one slave.
• What does this portend for the future of the agrarian republic that Jefferson helped establish?
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 305
Document D
I thank you, dear sir, for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of
the letter to your constituents on the Missouri question. . . . [T]his momen-
tous question (slavery), like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me
with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed,
indeed, for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence. . . .
The cession of that kind of property. . . would not cost me a second
thought. . . But as it is, we have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither
hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation
in the other. . . .
I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of
themselves by the generation of 1776, to acquire self-government and
happiness to their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and
unworthy passions of their sons, and that my only consolation is to be
that I live not to weep over it. . . . To yourself, as the faithful advocate of
the Union, I tender the offering of my high esteem and respect.
—Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820
John Holmes had sent Jefferson a copy of his letter to his Massachusetts constituents
explaining his support of the Missouri Compromise. Jefferson had witnessed the
debate from his retirement in Virginia. Jefferson’s comment about the “wolf by the
ears” is the lament of a slave owner who believed that slavery was immoral, but who
realized the abolition of slavery would destroy the South, as he knew it.
• What were the forces within the issues of the Missouri Compromise that were threatening
Jefferson’s agrarian republic?
Answer Key
PREP TEST 1-B
2-E
4-B
5-E
7-D
8-B
10-E
11-C
13-A
14-C
Select the response that best answers each question or best completes each sentence. 3-D 6-A 9-D 12-B
1. The expansion of the United States across the North c. began an era of colonization in Florida and the
American continent: Caribbean.
a. had little influence on the nation’s history prior to d. began an era of unprecedented peaceful relations
the Civil War. with foreign powers.
b. profoundly shaped the nation’s history between 1800 e. found that the nation’s role in international affairs
and 1850. still remained uncertain.
c. was most significant during the Washington and
3. The American economy in the early nineteenth century:
Adams administrations.
a. was completely dominated by subsistence agriculture.
d. created an empire for liberty that benefited every-
b. depended entirely on large-scale commercial
body in the United States.
agriculture.
e. began with Jefferson’s presidency and ended under
c. rested for the most part on manufacturing and
Jackson’s administration.
commerce.
2. As Americans entered the 1800s, they: d. was predominately rural and agricultural throughout
a. were discouraged by the political conflicts that char- the nation.
acterized the 1790s. e. ended its dependency on foreign manufactured
b. were proud of the international prestige the new commodities.
republic had gained.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 306
4. The inauguration of President Thomas Jefferson was a d. tried to protect native societies by prohibiting
significant occasion because: national expansion beyond the Arkansas River.
a. he was the first president to be elected by popular e. remained loyal to the Indian Intercourse Act of 1790,
vote of the American people. despite strong political opposition.
b. it marked the peaceful transition of power from one 9. The new generation of politicians who openly resisted
political party to another. British influence in North America were called:
c. it was such a complete and radical break with the pre- a. America Firsters.
vious administrations. b. Isolationists.
d. he initiated the era in American history known as c. Patriots.
Radical Republicanism. d. War Hawks.
e. it marked the first slave owner and southern president e. Jacksonians.
into the presidency.
10. The Hartford Convention:
5. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who established a. was the first talk of southern secession from the
the independence of the federal judiciary was: Union based on citizens protest.
a. Samuel Chase. b. concluded the peace treaty that ended the war with
b. John Jay. England late in 1814.
c. James Madison. c. was the first national meeting to nominate a presi-
d. Earl Warren. dential candidate.
e. John Marshall. d. called upon all Americans to fight against the English
6. Thomas Jefferson believed: in 1812.
a. that the expansion of the nation was essential e. strongly expressed New England Federalists’ opposi-
to liberty. tion to the War of 1812.
b. all people should be free and equal in the United 11. In 1816, the United States entered a period known as
States. the Era of Good Feelings that:
c. that Indians were not welcome in any part of the a. experienced no real deep political divisions until the
nation. emergence of sectional differences in the 1850s.
d. slavery should not be allowed to expand into b. led to a period of twenty years in which there were no
Louisiana. contested elections for the office of president.
e. the Constitution authorized the president to pur- c. seemed to indicate the success of Jeffersonian
chase territory. Republicanism and the end of the Federalists.
7. As the United States expanded to the West: d. was based on all the former Federalists joining the
a. most Americans strongly supported a powerful and Republicans and ending political partisanship.
viable Mexico as a neighboring nation. e. indicated an end to a sectionalism split in the United
b. Americans moved into parts of Mexico, and the States for the next seventy years.
United States purchased the area in 1803. 12. John Quincy Adams’s most successful effort as secretary
c. most people believed the United States no longer of state:
needed to acquire new territories. a. was to bring about a successful end to the War of
d. some Americans felt that Mexico provided an ideal 1812 against England.
opportunity for further territorial acquisition. b. dealt with Spain over Florida and the American bor-
e. most Americans feared Mexico as a neighbor, fearing der with Spanish territory.
the spread of Catholicism to the United States. c. was using the Monroe Doctrine to force European
8. Government policies regarding Indians: powers to give up their colonies.
a. ensured that Native Americans assimilated easily into d. guaranteed Americans the right to use the Mississippi
American culture and society. River and the port of New Orleans.
b. often led to a cycle of white encroachment, Indian e. was the fixed border with France at the 49th parallel
resistance, and ultimately tribal defeat. that resolved U.S. claims to Oregon.
c. guaranteed the survival of native cultures by guaran-
teeing Indians western reservations.
71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 307
13. The Missouri Compromise: 14. The western expansion that occurred in the early nine-
a. revealed deep sectional differences in the United teenth century:
States, especially over issues dealing with slavery. a. led to the empire of contented yeomen farmers that
b. established a plan that would gradually emancipate President Jefferson had envisioned.
all the slaves over a period of three generations. b. meant that by 1836 the United States had stretched
c. provided a realistic resolution to sectional differences from sea to shining sea.
and helped usher in the Era of Good Feelings. c. fueled a desire among Americans for even more
d. allowed slavery in Missouri but prohibited any states growth and territorial acquisitions.
admitted after 1820 from becoming slave states. d. marked an end of territorial growth until the issues
e. Permitted slavery in Missouri and all new states that associated with the Civil War were resolved.
were admitted into the Union from 1820 onward. e. indicated the growth of the Federalist Party, which
fueled an active participation in government.
For additional study resources for this chapter, go to

Out of Many, AP* Edition, at www.myhistorylab.com

American Communities

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

American Communities

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

American Communities

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

71193_09_ch09_p0268-0307.

QXD 4/12/10 3:23 PM Page 268

Expansion Touches Mandan Villages on the Upper Missouri

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 271

The development of America’s economy in a world of warring great powers

North American Communities WITH WHAT powers did the United

272 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

The Former American Colonies

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 273

Haiti and the Caribbean

274 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

of smaller islands), provided 80 to 90 percent of the European supply of sugar. All

British North America

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 275

276 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

hazardous, and the return trip upriver was slow,

Atlantic Ports: From

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 277

A National Economy WHAT WERE the most important

Cotton and the Economy of the Young Republic

Built for speed, the narrow beamed, many-sailed

278 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

80 of the profits in the booming shipping trade (see Figure 9-1).

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 279

The Jefferson Presidency WHAT VALUES were embodied in

280 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

Essay on the Principle of Population, published in 1798. Warning of an impending pop-

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 281

local governments. Power and political loyalty were

282 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

Opportunity: The Louisiana Purchase

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 283

by an army of former slaves led by Toussaint L’Ouverture. Expecting the British to

284 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

To explore this map further, go to www.myhistorylab.com

winter quarters OR E GON r

OHIO NEW JERSEY

Santa Fé PURCHASE TENNESSEE CAROLINA

Los Angeles MISSISSIPPI CAROLINA

Route of Lewis and Clark

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 285

Texas and the Struggle for Mexican Independence

Renewed Imperial Rivalry WHAT FACTORS led to conflict

F victory over the Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney in the presidential

286 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

QUICK REVIEW The Embargo Act

Madison and the Failure of “Peaceable Coercion”

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 287

A Contradictory Indian Policy

288 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

Pan-Indian military resistance movement Indian Resistance

AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824 CHAPTER 9 289

BRITISH N ORTH A M ERICA

Fort Madison Greenville

1808 KICKAPOOS OHIO

Fort San CHEROKEES

Ceded before 1784 Spread of The Prophet's influence

290 CHAPTER 9 AN AGRARIAN REPUBLIC, 1790–1824

Tecumseh, a Shawnee military leader, and his

WHAT WERE the consequences