I (1495-1775).   Unit II (1775-1828).  Unit III (1828-1850).  Unit IV (1850-1865).   Unit V (1865-1900).  Unit VI (1900-1919).   Unit VII (Over There).  Unit VIII (1919-1945).  Unit IX (1945--).  
Unit II: A. The War for American Independence.   B. The Articles of Confederation.   C. The Critical Period, 1783-1789.    D. The Constitution. E. Launching a New Ship of State, 1789-1800.  F. The Age of  Jefferson, 1800-1812.   G. Mr. Madison’s War, 1812-1814.   H. The Era of Good Feelings, 1814-1824.   I. Nationalism in the  Courts.    J. The Corrupt Bargain, 1824.

  Unit II

The  National  Period, 1775-1828

A. The War for American Independence
          1. The shot heard ‘round the world: Lexington and Concord
                    a. April 18, 1775 (The Intolerable Acts were passed in May 1774.)
                             1) The British learned that gunpowder was being stockpiled in Concord and that Sam Adams were there.  Seizing the lot would prevent an insurrection.
                             2) Paul Revere and William Dawes set out “to spread the alarm to every Middlesex village and farm and for the country folk to be up and to arm.”  Revere warned Lexington and reached Adams and Hancock but was captured by a British patrol and was sent back to Boston on foot.  Dawes eluded the British but was cut off from Concord .  At Lexington, they were joined by Doctor Samuel Prescott who reached Concord .
                   b. Lexington
                             1) Seventy-seven minutemen assembled on the Lexington Green to protect their town.  Captain John Parker ordered his men not to fire unless fired upon.
                             2) Major John Pitcairn led a detachment off the line of march onto the green and ordered the minutemen to disperse.
                              3) Legend has it that Parker shouted, “If they want war let it begin here.”  Someone fired, each side maintaining that it was the other.  Who started the war?  Were the British obstructed on a mission to a prevent war?  Were peace-loving citizens massacred?  A column of 700 men to seize some gunpowder seemed to be a punitive mission.  Box score: 8 Americans killed, 10 wounded.  One Redcoat was wounded.
                   c. Concord
                        The Lobsterbacks had marched sixteen miles from Boston to Lexington and another six miles to Concord where they destroyed some munitions.  Embattled farmers from nearby towns were waiting for them at the North Bridge . “O’re the rude bridge that arched the flood was fired the shot heard round the world.” Box score: 14 British killed. 0 Americans. 
                   d. On the twenty-two mile Battle Road back to Boston , the British column, reinforced to 1700, had to run the gauntlet of 3500 minuteman.  Box score: 49 Americans were killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing; 73 British were killed, 174 wounded, and 26 missing.
         2. Foreign aid was indispensable.  It came mostly from France and Spain. Louis XVI was more interested in weakening the British Empire and its trade with America than it was in American independence.  Eighty percent of the gunpowder used in the first year of the war came from France.  After the American victory at Saratoga and it seemed that the Revolution might actually succeed, foreign aid increased.  Six thousand troops under the twenty-year-old Lafayette fought for the Americans, and the French navy assisted with forty-five ships. The Prussian Baron von Steuben (pronounced von Shtoi-ben) trained colonial militias.  General Thaddeus Kosciusko and Count Casimir Pulaski of Poland fought for Washington .
          3. The population of the colonies in 1775 was about 2,430,000.  Carnes and Garraty and Edmund Morgan hold that about two-fifths supported independence.  About one third was Tories or loyalists.  The remainder was uncommitted.   John Adams had said, “We were about one third Tories, and one third timid, and one third true blue.”   Box score: 25,324 Americans were killed in the Revolution, a percentage of the total population exceeded only in the Civil War.
         4. After the Declaration of Independence, state assemblies drafted their own constitutions.  Their main features were strong legislatures and weak governors (short terms, no veto power).
         5. In 1776, there were about 500,000 slaves in America .  No colony had abolished slavery, and there were slaves in every colony.  The Declaration of Independence attempted to renounce slavery, but southern delegates would have none of it.

B. The Articles of Confederation
            1. The Second Continental Congress approved John Dickinson’s draft of the Articles of Confederation.  It established “a firm league of friendship” among the states, similar to the present-day European Union, each state retaining its sovereignty.  In the Declaration of Independence, it had declared that the colonies were free and independent states and said nothing of a federal government.  The Articles were ratified on March 1, 1781, before the war ended with Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown.
          2. Features of the national government under the Articles of Confederation
                    a. competency: The one-house Congress could wage war, send ambassadors, borrow money, coin money, make treaties, and regulate Indian affairs.  The Articles could be amended, but only by the unanimous approval of the states.                     
                    b. weaknesses: The national government created by the Articles did not have a president and an executive branch nor a federal judiciary.  Congress did not have the power to tax because its members were not elected by the people but were chosen by state legislatures.  Congress did not have the authority to raise an army or to regulate interstate commerce and foreign trade.  It was difficult for Congress to pass bills because the Articles required the vote of nine states.  Each state had one vote regardless of population or wealth.
          3. Accomplishments of the national government under the Articles of Confederation
                    a. Congress conducted the war, acquired foreign aid, and negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1784).
                    b. Congress implemented a land policy for the West.  Massachusetts had territory west of New York, and Connecticut had land west of Pennsylvania.  The original royal charters of some states did not indicate western boundaries.  Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia claimed that they extended to the Mississippi River.  Other states, such as New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, were limited to about one hundred miles from the Atlantic coast.  The landed states had great potential for expansion and wealth and the likelihood of low taxes.  Congress, under the Articles, persuaded the landed states to cede western lands to the federal government.
                   c. The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 divided unoccupied land into townships of six square miles.  Each township was divided into lots of 640 acres (one square mile) at $1 per acre.  Although many individuals could not afford this, it was a boon to land speculators. 
                   d. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was written by Thomas Jefferson.
                               1) It guaranteed freedom of worship which prohibited an established religion in the territory, trial by jury, used funds from the sale of land for education, and forbade slavery north of the Ohio River.  Abolitionists saw the latter as an early indication of the government’s intention that all territories should be closed to slavery and that slavery was restricted to the thirteen states.  Slaveholders insisted that the prohibition as restricted to the Northwest Territory.
                              2) It set up the steps to statehood.
                                  Territory that was not within a state was under the authority of Congress which appointed a territorial governor. When a territory numbered 5000, the settlers could elect a territorial legislature.  Territories were not colonies, and the inhabitants governed themselves.  When a territory reached 60,000 (the population of the least populous of the thirteen original states), it could apply for statehood.  The Northwest Territory ultimately yielded five states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

C. The Critical Period, 1783-1789.  (Some historians call it “The Republican Period.”)
      The term “Critical Period ” came from The Critical Period in American History, 1783-1789 written in 1888 by John Fiske, who was a son of the Gilded Age and a social Darwinist.  He held that a government that was bad for business was a bad government.  Fiske’s slogan was “Anarchy on the loose.  Patriots to the rescue.”  Liberty won at such a great price was in danger of being lost by chaos from within and helplessness against foreign predators from without.  Carnes and Garraty say that subsequent research has modified Fiske’s negative thesis.  Edmund Morgan is downright enthusiastic about the period, particularly about the civil liberties in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.  Both Fiske and Morgan based their evaluation of the period on its performance on the single issue that was central to their agendas.
          1. Financial chaos
                    a. The government printed 400 million unbacked dollars to pay the war debt.  By 1781, inflation caused $1000 in paper money to decline in value to $1 in specie (gold).  Debtors welcomed inflation, and creditors took a loss 
                    b. Foreign nations insisted on specie in payment of the $60,000 war debt (about $969,000 today).  France wanted to keep her new ally humble and poor.  Only the Dutch extended credit to the US.
          2. Some Revolutionary War officers, who were disgruntled because they were not receiving back pay and pensions, were involved in the Newburgh Conspiracy to attempt a putsch.  George Washington appealed to them and defused the crisis.
          3. Shays’s Rebellion (August 1786)
             The Massachusetts Legislature, dominated by merchants, had halted the circulation of paper currency, required the payment of debts in specie, and raised taxes to pay the state’s war debt.  Like Nathaniel Bacon and the Paxton Boys, debt-ridden farmers eighty miles distant from Boston, who were faced with foreclosure of their farms by the banks and imprisonment for debt, were not supported by the capitol.  Daniel Shays, a captain during the Revolution, led about eleven hundred farmers in closing four debtors' courthouses in western Massachusetts to prevent further foreclosures.  It was a symbolic act to call attention to their desperation.  Shays’s followers also tried but failed to seize an arsenal in Springfield. The rebellion was quickly suppressed.  Some feared that it would undermine property rights and the rule of law and that insurrection might spread to other states.  It was a turning point for Washington, Madison, and Hamilton who became convinced of the urgent need for a strong national government.
          4. The British stirred the natives to terrorize the settlers on the frontier. 
          5. The British denied New Englanders the fishing trade, restricted US trade with the West Indies, and hurt the economy of the South by imposing a tariff on rice. There was even the fear that Britain would retake its colonies.
          6. Spain denied the right of deposit at New Orleans.  Spain and England preferred to deal with thirteen states than with one nation.
          7. Congress could not prevent the Barbary pirates from seizing American ships in the Mediterranean and selling the sailors into slavery.
D. The Constitution
          1. The Annapolis Convention, September 11-14, 1786
              James Madison invited the states to send delegates to a commercial convention in Annapolis, MD to discuss economic problems.
                    a. problems
                              1) inflation
                              2) Congress lacked the authority to regulate interstate commerce.  States with thriving ports taxed shipments to or from other states. New York imposed a tax on goods that were sold in New Jersey and Connecticut and levied an “import” tax on farm produce from New Jersey and lumber from Connecticut.
                              3) The economies and cultures of the sections were so different that some discussed dividing America into four nations—Eastern, Middle, Southern, and Trans-Allegheny.
                              4) Congress also lacked the authority to levy tariffs.  Britain was dumping low cost goods in the USA, and American manufacturers and retailers were unable to compete.
                              5) Congress was unable to honor bonds purchased during the Revolution and to pay veterans’ pensions. Hard-working citizens were losing confidence in the government.
                    b. The delegates agreed that the government under the Articles was inadequate to meet the crisis.  Alexander Hamilton called for follow-up meeting in Philadelphia to consider not only the economy but “all matters necessary to render the constitution of the federal government adequate to the exigencies of the union.”  Congress endorsed a revision of the Articles.
          2. Membership at the Philadelphia Convention (May 25, 1787 to September 17, 1787)
                    a. G. Washington was elected president of the convention.  The leaders among the fifty-five founders were James Madison , “The Father of the Constitution,” a brilliant student of republican government, Benjamin Franklin (age 81), Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay .  Jefferson and John Adams were in Europe on assignment from the government.
                    b. The new nation had a wealth of experience.  It was steeped in English law and the philosophy of the Enlightenment which flourished among the literati until the Second Great Awakening when most Americans turned to evangelical fundamentalism.  It had the experience of representative self-government in colonial and state legislatures and courts.  Eight delegates to the Federal Convention had signed the Declaration of Independence, fifteen had helped to draft their state constitutions, and almost three-fourths of them had served in the Confederation Congress since 1781.
          3. The Constitution was a product of the Enlightenment.
                    a. It drew from Locke’s principles on government by the consent of the governed and rights based on nature in Two Treatises on Civil Government (1690),
                    b. from Voltaire on protection against tyranny,
                    c. from Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws (1750) on checks and balances in government to prevent dictatorship.
                    d. Revisionists insist that the relationship of the federal, state, and local governments in the Constitution was based on the Iroquois Great Law  The Iroquois Confederation was made up of six nations, and each nation was made up of several tribes.  Madison’s exhaustive notes on the Philadelphia convention do not indicate that the founders based the structure of the US government on the Great Law.  This interpretation has been widely discredited. In 1987, however, the US Senate passed a resolution stating that the US Construction was explicitly modeled on the Iroquois Confederation.
          4. “A bundle of compromises”
               There was a clash between large and small states and between free and slave states.
                    a. The Virginia Plan of James Madison was pro-large states (VA, MA, PA).  It scrapped the Articles and constructed a new national government.  It proposed:
                              1) a two house Congress like the British Parliament, each house representing the states proportionally.  This vested sovereignty in the nation rather than in the states.
                              2) a chief executive whom the Congress would appoint,
                              3) a federal judiciary.
                    b. The New Jersey Plan of William Paterson was pro-small states.  It maintained the Articles’ one-house Congress in which states were represented equally.  This vested sovereignty in the states.  It would amend the Articles of Confederation to give Congress the power to tax, to regulate foreign trade and interstate commerce, and to appoint a president and a federal judiciary.
                   c. the Great Compromise
                        Benjamin Franklin crafted a compromise that satisfied the large states with proportional representation in the House of Representatives, the slave states with the three-fifth’s compromise, and the small states with equal representation in the Senate.
                    d. slavery and the US Constitution
                               1) the Three-fifths Compromise 
                                   In 1790, there were about 694,000 slaves in America in a total population of 3.9 million.  Abolitionists insisted that slavery was incompatible with the self-evident truths of equality and liberty.  Southern delegates refused to support the Constitution if slavery were abolished and wanted slaves to be counted for purposes of representation in Congress.  The compromise was that representation would be determined by adding to the number of free persons three-fifths of the slave population. (Article I, Section 2, paragraph 3)  This gave about twenty more representatives to the slave states.  Edmund Morgan said, “They threw equality to the winds but purchased the continuation of the Union.”
                               2) The Fugitive Slave Law (Article IV, section 2, paragraph 3)  Runaway enslaved persons must be returned to their owners.
                               3) The constitutional convention ordered Congress not to prohibit the international slave trade for twenty years (Article I, section 9, paragraph 1).    By 1808, the importation of slaves had been outlawed in all states but North Carolina and Georgia.  Between 1777 and 1784, the constitution of Massachusetts abolished slavery, and NJ, NY, PA, CT, and RI adopted gradual emancipation; i.e., freeing the children of all slaves born after November 1, 1780 on their twenty-eighth birthday.  Some historians hold that many of the founders thought that slavery would soon become economically counter-productive and would die a natural death, but the invention of the cotton gin (1793) increased the demand for slave labor.  Others hold that the founders had no reason to expect slavery to end any time soon.  Slavery was a 180-year-old institution in some states.  Their economy was based on slave labor, the attitude that blacks were racially inferior was deep, and maintaining the institution preserved the social order.
                    d. The convention then hammered out specific provisions.
                              1) terms of office: two years for representatives, six years for senators, four years for the president
                              2) the implied powers or the “elastic clause ” (Article I, section 8, last paragraph): “Congress shall have the power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers.”  For example, the power to tax and coin money would be extended to establishing the Bank of the US.
                              3) The Senate would ratify treaties, try impeachments, and advise and consent on executive and judicial appointments.

                                                             Delegated Powers
The powers granted to the federal government are called delegated, expressed, or enumerated powers because they are specifically listed as powers of Congress.  Under Article I, Section 8, Congress, both the House of Representatives and the Senate concurring, has the power to:
levy taxes (money bills originate in the House)    borrow money
declare war                                                                  establish post offices
coin money and regulate its value                                   grant patents and copyrights
raise and support an army and navy                               call out state militias in emergencies
regulate interstate commerce and foreign trade
have jurisdiction over the area in which the national capital is established

                                                             Reserved Powers

Under the Tenth Amendment, powers not granted to Congress are reserved to the states or to the people.  These are commonly called states’ rights, reserved powers or police powers.  The states have the power to:
states have the power to:
regulate marriage and divorce                                        build roads      
control education                                                          establish voting requirements


          5. Checks and balances
              To prevent tyranny, the Constitution followed the thought of Montesquieu  and created three branches of government with checks and balances among the branches.

                                                   Executive Checks and Balances

The President can check Congress by:
1. vetoing bills passed by Congress
2. appealing to the public for support of his
    programs

 

The President  can check the Supreme Court by:
appointing judges

Judicial Checks and Balances

The Court can check Congress by:
declaring that an act of Congress is unconstitutional (judicial review)

The Court can check the President by:
declaring that executive orders and laws supported by the president are unconstitutional

 

 Legislative Checks and Balances

Congress can check the President by:
1. not passing a bill presented by the
    president
2. overriding a presidential veto
3. impeaching the president and removing
    him/her from office
4. refusing to ratify proposed treaties or
    to confirm presidential appointments

Congress can check the Supreme Court by:
1. initiating amendments to the Constitution
2. increasing the size of the Supreme Court
3. approving or rejecting the president’s
    nominees to the federal judiciary

6. How much democracy?
              The Federalists admired the British Parliament that was controlled by the ruling class and did not permit the common people to have very much involvement in government.  Jefferson and Madison said that the Federalists were Tories who wanted the return of an aristocracy, patronage, a large standing army, and deficit financing.   Shays’s Rebellion had shocked the founders and stiffened their resolve to prevent mobocracy.  The populace had to be controlled.  “The evils we experience flow from an excess of democracy.  Democracy is the worst of all political evils.” (Elbridge Gerry)  )  The founders believed that those who own the most property and have the greatest stake in preserving order should govern.  Hamilton said that people are turbulent and fickle and seldom judge rightly.  In the Constitution, which the Federalists drafted:
                    a. Women could not vote until the Nineteenth Amendment (1920).
                    b. The people would not elect United States senators.  They were chosen by state legislatures (Article I, Section 3, paragraph l).  Often the seat went to the highest bidder.  Not until 1913 and the Seventeenth Amendment were senators were elected by popular vote.
                    c. It was proposed that the Congress choose the president, but the Constitution finally devised the electoral college which elects the president.  In four elections the candidate who received the most popular votes was not elected president.  In 1824, the House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams over Andrew Jackson.  In 1876, a fifteen-member electoral commission accepted the electoral vote count that gave the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes over Samuel Tilden.  In 1888, Grover Cleveland received more popular votes but less electoral votes than Benjamin Harrison.  In 2000, the Supreme Court (5-4) accepted the Florida vote count which gave the presidency to George W. Bush over Al Gore who received a plurality of over 540,000 popular votes.
           7. The Constitution made no provision for the role of political parties in government.  The founders disdained political parties which, they believed, would represent selfish interests and threaten national unity.  The Federalists, however, were a de facto political party.  They expected to rule and wanted no opposition. 
          8. Ratification (1789)
                    a. During the drive for ratification, there was a clash between the Anti-federalists (the middle class and small farmers) and the Federalists (wealthy merchants and land owners).   
                              1) Anti-federalists clung to the autonomy of the colonial period and the strong states’ rights under the Articles.  They held that the Revolution was fought to overthrow the tyranny of the king and Parliament.  Patrick Henry feared that the new constitution, which placed no term limit on the presidency, “squints toward monarchy.”   Rhode Island did not send any delegates to Philadelphia because of the perceived Federalist threat to states’ rights..
                              2) The US Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights.  Ten state constitutions had a Bill of Rights.  From France, Jefferson was writing to friends not to ratify the Constitution without protection for the rights of citizens and of the states.
                    b. James Madison and most of the founders initially opposed a Bill of Rights. It was not needed because checks and balances were in place to prevent tyranny.  A list of rights, they feared, might be interpreted as “these rights and only these rights.”  If it appeared that the government were giving rights to the people, it could just as easily revoke them. Washington argued that the powers of the government were limited to those delegated to it, and the Constitution did not give the government power to regulate speech, press, or other liberties.
                    c. The Federalists, who were better organized. Hamilton led the campaign to ratify the Constitution with The Federalist Papers  which were a series of essays that stressed the inadequacy of the government under the Articles and the need for a strong national government.  They declared that the Constitution implemented republican government and established checks and balances.  Federalist 26 said that power is the guarantor, not the enemy, of liberty and that nothing is more dangerous than “the mischievous effects of unstable government.”  Hamilton wrote fifty-one of the Federalist Papers, Madison twenty-nine, and John Jay  five.
                    d. ratifying conventions
                        The people in each state elected delegates to a convention whose sole task was to ratify the US Constitution.  The Constitution would not be ratified by state legislatures.  The federal government would not be created by the states.  According to the Preamble: “We the people…do ordain and establish this Constitution of the United States of America.”  Ratification of the Constitution required the approval of nine state ratifying conventions.  Popular participation, however, was limited.  Women, blacks, and the propertyless were excluded, and three-fourths of those who were eligible were too indifferent to vote for delegates.
          9. Interpretations of the Constitution
                     a.  Charles Beard wrote An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913) in which he held that the delegates at the Constitutional Convention were not venerable founders passing down The Holy Grail to the ages.  Thirty-five were lawyers, thirteen were merchants, twelve were slave-holding plantation owners, and about two dozen were bondholders, who wanted to create a government that would protect their interests.
                               1) Beard read in Federalist 10 by Madison that the purpose of government was to protect property rights.  He concluded that the Constitution was a charter for business.  It gave the federal government the power to regulate interstate commerce and foreign trade and to protect patents and copyrights.
                               2) Beard was a Progressive and thought that the economic problems of his time were caused by laissez-faire capitalism and the constitutional protection of wealth.
                               3) Ultimately, most people thought that the Constitution would promote growth and international respectability over inertia and weakness.  Eschewing protection of property would not be in the best interests of the people.  Although every contention in Beard’s thesis may not stand up under close scrutiny, the economic interpretation is significant.
                    b. the political interpretation
                        The aim of the Revolution and the Constitution was to prevent tyranny. People were taxed by elected representatives. The Constitution reinforced the democratic principle of government by the consent of the governed.  It broke new ground by deciding that sovereignty lay with the people, not with the states.  By ratifying the Constitution, the people divided power between the federal government and the states.  
                    c. Revisionists attack the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  Neither abolished slavery, and they attack Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Patrick Henry  who owned slaves.  Feminists point out that the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence said, “All men are created equal.”  Abigail Adams admonished her husband, “Remember the ladies.  While you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, you insist on retaining absolute power over wives.”  The Constitution denied women the right to vote.

E. Launching a New Ship of State, 1789-1800
          1. The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was approved by Congress in 1789 and was finally adopted in 1791.  Anti-federalists insisted that citizens must have rights that the federal government, local laws, or a majority could not abridge.
                    a. Madison knew that Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York would not ratify the Constitution without protection for states’ rights and civil liberties, and so he drafted the Bill of Rights.  This won the support of Patrick Henry, John Hancock, and Sam Adams for ratifying the Constitution.  North Carolina ratified the Constitution only after Congress approved the Bill of Rights, and Rhode Island did not ratify until 1790.
                    b. Among Madison’s sources were the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights (1689), and the bills of rights in the constitutions of ten states.
                              1) The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of religion, speech, press, and assembly. Few rights, however, are absolute, and historically there have been exceptions.
                                        a) The federal government was prohibited from establishing a religion, but the states were not.  The Federalist-dominated Congregational Church remained the established religion of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts until 1833.  The First Amendment guaranteed the free exercise of religion except where it conflicts with the law; e.g., polygamy and drug use.  In the nineteenth century there had been a stress on free exercise of religion.  Presently the disestablishment clause is interpreted by some as freedomHe held that the Federalists believed that the common man was incapable of self-government, served the interests of the wealthy, and maintained power by patronage and the force of arms. from religion.  It is invoked against prayer and the pledge of allegiance in public schools and tuition vouchers for students who attend private schools.
                                        b) The rights of free speech and press have been limited to protect security in wartime.  There is conflict over reporters revealing sources in court.
                              2) Some amendments upheld rights fought for in the Revolution.
                                        a) The First Amendment upheld the right of assembly that had been violated by the ban on town meetings.
                                        b) Colonial militias depended on the right to bear arms, which was protected in the Second Amendment.
                                        c) The Third Amendment forbade quartering troops in private homes in peacetime.
                                        d) The Fourth Amendment forbade unreasonable search and seizure.  Redcoats had routinely subjected troublemakers to harassing searches.
                                        e) The Fifth Amendment, reflecting the influence of John Locke, protected citizens from being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
                                        f) The Sixth Amendment also protected habeas corpus rights; i.e., the right to be informed of the charge and the right to a speedy trial by jury.
                              3) The Ninth amendment protected all civil rights not specified in the Constitution.  (This is the constitutional basis of the right to privacy.)
                              4) The Tenth Amendment was the states’ rights amendment.  All powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution are reserved to the states. 
                              5) Madison  proposed twelve amendments.  One that did not pass was that there be one representative in the House for every 50,000 people.  This would give today’s House over 5000 representatives instead of the current total, fixed by law, at 435.  The other was that no salary increase for members of Congress be effective until after the following congressional election.  This amendment was reintroduced in 1992 and became the Twenty-seventh Amendment.

 

1790

1816

1824

1834

1854

Hamiltonians

Federalists


Era of Good

National Republicans

Whigs

Republicans

Jeffersonians

Democratic-Republicans

Feelings

Jacksonian Democrats

Democrats

 

          2. Hamilton’s program (1790)
             In his Report on the Public Credit, Alexander Hamilton wrote that, in order to promote economic growth, America must increase manufacturing, establish a national bank, and participate in the stock market.  In order to establish credit, it must pay its debts.  He proposed that the federal government assume state debts.  It would then issue new bonds which would pour more money into the treasury and could be used as security for loans.  A government deficit benefits banks and investors in bonds.  He said that a national debt is a blessing.
                    a. The federal government would pay the $77.1 million debt (about $1.87 billion today) which included the $11.7 million federal debt to foreign countries and the $40.4 million domestic debt, as well as $25 million in state debts.
                              1) During the Revolution, patriotic Americans had purchased bonds to support the war effort.  With the post-war inflation and the seeming inability of the government to back their bonds, many sold them to speculators for as little as fifteen cents on the dollar.  Most of these traders were Hamilton’s supporters.
                              2) Southern states that had paid their debts objected to the assumption of state debts by the federal government.  Four-fifths of the unpaid debts were those of northern states, Hamilton’s base of support.  Later, Jefferson traced the origins of the two political parties to the assumption controversy.  When it became evident to Madison that the Federalists favored northern manufacturers and bankers, he gravitated toward the Democratic-Republican Party, Virginia, and the planter class. Hamilton mollified the southern states by promising Jefferson and Madison to locate nation’s capital along the Potomac River.  This would give southerners greater opportunity to influence the federal bureaucracy.
                    b. Establish a Bank of the United States modeled on the Bank of England.
                        The government needed a repository for federal taxes and an institution through which to pay debts, disperse currency, and promote economic growth by extending credit to businessmen.  President Washington signed a twenty-year charter for the First Bank of the US in 1791.  There was oppisition.
                              1) Southerners and westerners complained that the bank would support northern manufacturing rather than agriculture.
                              2) Jefferson maintained that the Bank of the US was unconstitutional.  As a strict constructionist, he stressed the word “necessary” in the elastic clause and argued that the Constitution did not empower the Congress to establish a Bank.  Hamilton, a loose constructionist, stressed the word “proper” and maintained that, since the Constitution gave the Congress the power to tax, it had the implied power from the elastic clause to establish a bank.
                    c. excise tax on liquor
                        Hamilton proposed this “sin tax” as an immediate source of revenue needed to pay the national debt and to improve morals.  There was violent protest.
                              1) It was a sectional conflict, East against West.  Like Bacon’s Rebellion and Shays’s Rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion was also a class conflict, rich against poor.  The westerners used the very rationale of the Revolution, taxation without representation.  Westerners were unequally represented in state and federal legislatures, the government had given them little protection from Native Americans, and it had failed to build roads or canals in the West.  Whiskey was an important product of the trans-Appalachian region.
                              2) the Whiskey Rebellion (1794)
                                        a) Westerners refused to pay the eight cents per gallon tax ($1.61 today).  They said that they would tar and feather any tax collector who came into their parts, and they threatened to burn down Pittsburgh.
                                        b) Washington would not tolerate another Shays’s Rebellion or any uprising instigated by subversive Democratic-Republicans.  He personally led a force of 13,000 troops into western Pennsylvania.  It seemed to indicate the willingness of the government to use military force against its own citizens.
                                        c) Outmanned and outgunned, the disgruntled farmers fled before the troops arrived.  Hamilton led a triumphant parade through Pittsburgh.  The few rebels who were captured were convicted of treason but were pardoned upon taking a loyalty oath.
                    d. protective tariff
                        In his Report on Manufactures, Hamilton wrote that America's economy should be based on manufacturing and that its fledgling industries needed protection.  He proposed a tariff of 5%.
                               1) Southern and western farmers were more dependent on imports than northerners and would have to pay higher prices on imported manufactured goods.  They also saw the tariff as government support for the manufacturing states of the Northeast.  Jefferson won this one.  The tariff bill did not pass.  The directions that the new government took under the Federalist Party lent support to the economic interpretation of the Constitution.
                               2) Significant in the American industrial revolution was Eli Whitney’s  process for manufacturing interchangeable parts (1798).  Previously, parts were custom-made.
          3. Jefferson supported  
                    a. the French Revolution, particularly its principles of liberty and equality.
                                    1) To Jefferson it was “the greatest cause known to man.”  After Shays’s Rebellion he wrote, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  Like Diderot, Jefferson dreamed of the day when the last king would be strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
                                    2) During and the Reign of Terror, 17,000 aristocrats and churchmen went to the guillotine.  The Federalists saw that the masses could be as tyrannical as monarchs and were determined that mobocracy and anti-religious ideas not spread to the US.  The Jeffersonians were Gallomen, and the Federalists were Anglomen who favored rule by the aristocracy.  Hamilton also favored trade with England.  Half of America’s exports went to England, and three-quarters of its imports came from England.
                    b. the common man, i.e., the gentleman farmer.  (This was not Andrew Jackson’s less refined “common man” and certainly not FDR’s “forgotten man.”)  Democracy would flourish best in a nation of farmers, moderately prosperous and educated, living under a thrifty government that would not meddle in their affairs, be they commercial, domestic, or religious. He held that the Federalists believed that the common man was incapable of self-government, served the interests of the wealthy, and maintained power by patronage and the force of arms.
                                   1) The ideal model of democracy was small communities, spread out, moving further westward.  Remoteness made it difficult for a strong national government to impose control.  Jefferson said, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny against the mind of man.”
                                   2) He believed that the essence of liberty is economic independence.  A person who receives a wage from another is dependent and never truly free.  The ideal basis of democracy is self-employed farmers and artisans.  He regretted the growth of industry.
                   c. Education of all the people was necessary in a democracy.

                                Comparison of Federalist and Democratic-Republican Parties

 

Federalist Party

Democratic-Republican Party

leaders

Hamilton, John Adams

Jefferson, Madison

supported

manufacturers, merchants, bankers, and large land owners;  strongest in northeastern and middle states

small farmers and plantation owners, laborers, and small businessmen; strongest in south and west

interpretation of the Constitution

loose constructionists; favored a strong federal government

strict constructionists; favored a restrained federal government and states’ rights

views on democracy

The aristocrats favored limiting popular participation in government and distrusted the masses.  A wealthy ruling class should govern.

wanted everyone to be educated and to participate in government; favored rule by an aristocracy of talent

views on specific issues

supported the Bank of the US, protective tariff, and assumption debts.

favored state banks; opposed assumption and protective tariff.  It wanted a balanced budget.

foreign affairs

partial to Britain and the conservatism of the British government

partial to France and the Revolution that overthrew tyranny and aristocracy

           4. Many historians hold that the two political parties grew in the 1790s because of differing views on the assumption of debts, the Bank of the US, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Jay Treaty, the Proclamation of Neutrality, England and France, and the Alien and Sedition Acts.
          5. President Washington was setting a precedent in establishing a cabinet, conducting foreign policy, proposing a legislative agenda, and using the veto.  Although he was grateful to Lafayette, his Proclamation of Neutrality indicated that America’s foreign policy should be based primarily on its interests, rather than on friendships or alliances.  These lay in developing America, not in Europe.  In his farewell address (1796), he declined to run for a third term.  He warned against entangling alliances and against the baneful effects of a spirit of party.  He also warned against disunion from a conflict between North and South, industry and agriculture, abolitionists and the defenders of slavery, and from adventurers who went west of the Appalachian Mountains becoming disconnected from those who clung to the eastern seaboard.
          6. By the Jay Treaty (1794), war with England was avoided. England agreed to evacuate the Northwest Territory, pay for its attacks on US shipping, and permit the US to trade with Britain and the West Indies.  The US agreed to pay its pre-1776 debts to England.  The treaty was unpopular among National-Republicans because impressment was left unresolved and the British did not compensate owners for slaves whom they had freed during the Revolution.  Because Madison opposed the treaty, Washington never consulted him again.  Miffed at the Jay Treaty and US favoritism toward England, France attacked American merchant ships.  US diplomats attempted to negotiate trade protection, but agents of Tallyrand, called X, Y, and Z, demanded bribes.  Enraged by the XYZ Affair, some Federalists called for a declaration of war on France.  “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,” they cried.   
                    a. The Federalist majority exploited the threat of war to punish France and to condemn the Democratic-Republicans as disloyal and check their growth.  To placate his base short of going to war, President John Adams urged Congress to pass the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798).  His intent was to intimidate critics of his foreign policy toward France and England. 
                              1) The Naturalization Act increased the residency requirement for citizenship from five to fourteen years.
                              2) The Alien Friends Act empowered the president to deport non-citizens whom he judged dangerous to the USA and those whom he suspected of treason.
                              3) The Alien Enemies Act empowered the president to deport any nationals of a country with which the USA was at war.
                              4) The Sedition Act banned false or malicious attacks by the press on the government and inciting opposition to any act of Congress or the president.
                    b. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolves by Madison and Jefferson respectively attacked the Alien and Sedition Acts as dictatorial and unconstitutional.  They saw violations of states’ rights in this excessive use of power by the federal government.  Their states’ rights manifesto gave birth to the compact theory, according to which:
                              1) The states, by ratifying the Constitution, created the federal government which derived its powers from a compact among the states.  The Declaration of Independence declared that the colonies were free and independent states.  The states continued to be sovereign during the time of the Articles of Confederation, and they never surrendered their sovereignty.
                              2) The states could determine the constitutionality of acts of Congress.
                    c. The Sedition Act was a slap in the face of the freedoms of speech and press, but its constitutionality was never challenged in the Federalist-dominated Supreme Court.  About ten anti-Federalist editors were convicted.  The Sedition Act was President Adams’s greatest error.  The backlash against giving the presidency near-dictatorial powers ultimately weakened the office.  The acts also provoked the compact theory which would threaten the union.
         7. The Federalists were brilliant financiers and diplomats who revived the economy and established a stable national government.  They steadfastly maintained, however, that the wise, the rich, and natural rulers should govern, and they were unwilling or unable to attract the common man.  They resorted to force rather than persuasion.  They were aristocrats who expected commoners to mind their betters.  They could not adapt, and so they died.

 F. The Age of Jefferson, 1800-1812
           1. The election of 1800
              According to the Constitution, each elector voted for two presidential candidates.  The runner-up became vice-president.  In 1800, there was a tie in the electoral vote between two Democratic-Republicans, Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr.  Hamilton, who detested Burr and said that he was dangerous, persuaded enough Federalists to support Jefferson.  This and Hamilton’s relentless opposition that four years later cost Burr the nomination as vice-president and the election to the governorship of New York put Hamilton and Burr on the path to a deadly confrontation in Weehawken, NJ.  This election demonstrated the necessity of each elector casting one vote for president and one vote for vice-president, which was accomplished by the Twelfth Amendment (1804).
          2. “The Revolution of 1800 ”
              Federalists had attacked “Mad Tom Jefferson” as a radical and a Jacobin.
                    a. Some things changed.  This was the extent of  the "Revolution" of 1800.
                             1) The Democratic-Republicans won the presidency and a majority in Congress.  While cabinet members were Democratic-Republicans, Jefferson permitted many Federalists to keep their government jobs.  In his inaugural address he said, “Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.  We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
                              2) He rejected Hamilton ’s policy of deficit financing and was determined to balance the federal budget.  To cut expenses, he downsized the federal government and drastically reduced the size of the army and navy.  The USA was three thousand miles from Europe, and it could rely on local militias, coastal forts, and gunboats for defense.
                              3) He pardoned journalists who had been convicted under the Sedition Act.
                              4) Congress repealed the whiskey tax and did not renew the Naturalization Act.  The residency requirement for citizenship returned to five years.
                              5) The real Revolution of 1800 was a movement away from monarchical tendencies, patronage, a condescending attitude toward the masses, debt, and a large peacetime army to more democracy, an aristocracy of talent, less government, less spending, and the growth of state banks.
                    b. Some things stayed the same.
                             1) Jefferson did not urge Congress to abolish the Bank of the US .
                              2) Jefferson privately opposed slavery, although he owned slaves.  He eschewed confrontation.  Since abolition would cause a fierce conflict, he did not press it.  Congress outlawed the international slave trade on January 1, 1808.
         3. The Louisiana Purchase (1803)
                   a. causes for concern
                             1) Spain ceded the Louisiana Territory to France in 1800, and Napoleon announced that he would close the port of New Orleans to American trade in 1802 because he wanted it for the West Indian sugar trade.  Since three-eighths of American produce passed through New Orleans, western farmers clamored for protection.
                             2) Jefferson had always been partial to France, but he said, “The day that France takes possession of New Orleans, we will be forced to marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.”
                             3) Jefferson directed James Monroe and Robert Livingston to negotiate the purchase of New Orleans, and Congress authorized the expenditure of up to $10 million.
                    b. France wanted to get out quickly.  A slave uprising led by Toussaint-Louverture in Haiti ended Napoleon’s plan to enter the sugar trade.
                               1) Napoleon feared that either the US would annex the Louisiana Territory when France was occupied with war in Europe or that the British Navy would seize it for the US .
                              2) He also wanted to prevent an Anglo-American alliance.
                   c. Tallyrand offered to sell the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million (about $294 million today).  Livingston grabbed it.
                   d. Jefferson had serious reservations because he had been a strict constructionist.  The Constitution did not expressly authorize the president to acquire new territory.  His advisors convinced him that this was no time for scrupulosity.  The president’s power to negotiate treaties implied the power to acquire territory.  Congress ratified the treaty and appropriated the balance of the $15 million.  Federalists held that the treaty was unconstitutional.  Now they were strict constructionists.  The Louisiana Territory would become farm states and Democratic-Republican, abolitionists feared that slavery would spread into the new territory, and Federalisis doubted that the French and Spanish inhabitants of the territory could become real Americans. 
                     e. The Louisiana Purchase achieved Jefferson ’s goal of securing the port of New Orleans that would provide an outlet for western crops.  It also made possible his dream of a nation of farmers in small, spread-out communities.  The Louisiana Territory (828,000 square miles) doubled the size of the US, provided millions of acres of rich farmland, a wealth of natural resources, and the whole Mississippi River .  
                     f. Jefferson sent the Corps of Discovery under Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Missouri River to the Pacific Ocean.  The fifteen year old native American female Sacajawea served as a translator.
          4. The Embargo Act (1807)
              There was a conflict between France and Britain over control of European commerce.  Both prohibited neutral nations from trading with the other, intercepted American vessels, and seized cargoes.  The HMS Leopard attacked and boarded the USS Chesapeake and impressed four crewmen.  Thinking that Britain and France desperately needed American raw materials and foodstuffs, Jefferson urged Congress to pass the Embargo Act that forbade all American vessels to trade with foreign countries.  The embargo worked minor economic hardship on England and France, was bitterly opposed by Federalists, had a devastating effect on New England merchants and Southern planters, and resulted in increased smuggling.

G. Mr. Madison’s War, 1812-1814
          1. The War Hawks.   
              In 1810, more western Democratic-Republican “buckskin statesmen” were elected to Congress.  Among them were Henry Clay from Kentucky and John C. Calhoun from South Carolina.  With Daniel Webster, the “Great Triumvirate” would dominate politics for forty years.
          2. The prevailing view is that the war was fought for freedom of the seas, although revisionists ascribed it to the expansionist ambitions of the war hawks.
          3. Madison could not withstand the cry for war.  The following causes were cited.
                    a. impressment of US crewmen.  Britain admitted to three thousand impressments.  America claimed that they were more than twice that number.
                    b. seizing American shipping, a violation of the rights of neutrals at sea
                    c. blockading of US ports
                    d. inciting Indian hostility.  The British continued to maintain forts between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River which restrained expansion.  They held that they were justified because the US had not honored the provision in the Treaty of Paris (1783) to compensate Tories for property that had been confiscated during the Revolution.
          4. The USA was not prepared for war.
                    a. The war should not have started.  When Congress declared war, it did not know that Parliament had already revoked the offending Orders in Council.  England was at war with Napoleon and did not want a war with the USA.  Peace talks began almost immediately.
                    b. Since the Jefferson administration, the army and navy had been reduced to about 3000 men.  The USA went to war against the world’s most powerful navy with sixteen vessels.
          5. Dissention in New England
                    a. opposition to the War of 1812
                              1) War with Britain could be a disaster for New England’s merchant fleet.
                              2) The New England states repudiated conscription and used their militias to defend only their own states.  They also withheld federal taxes for the duration of the war. (Federalists had changed since the Whiskey Rebellion.)
                    b. The Hartford Convention (1814) demanded three constitutional amendments.  If their demands were ignored, they would reconvene the convention and proceed with the secession of the New England states from the Union and then sign a separate peace treaty with Britain.  (Another flip-flop: Federalists invoking states’ rights and secession!)   Their demands:
                              1) Abolish the three-fifths compromise.  It gave the southern Democratic-Republican states, which had voted to declare war, too many representatives.  Also, many New Englanders opposed slavery. 
                              2) Require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to declare war
                              3) Require a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress to admit new states. 
                    c. Despite their opposition to the war, New Englanders profited from it.  New England merchants continued to trade with Canada and sold supplies to the British Navy.  Without a Bank of the US, gold from the rest of the country flowed into Boston banks.  With the wartime demand for textiles, the New England mills increased six-fold.
                    d. As the delegates from the Hartford Convention arrived to make their demands, Washington City was wildly celebrating the news of General Andrew Jackson’s victory at New Orleans.  The British strategy to take New Orleans, link up with British forces in Canada, and halt the expansion of the USA at the Mississippi River had failed.  The war was over, their demands were pointless, and the Federalists were regarded as petty and disloyal.  Although the Federalist Party continued in New England, it was one of the casualties of the war.
          6. The Treaty of Ghent (1814) merely ended the war.  It said nothing about impressment.  With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, there was no further need for impressment.  Box score 1,877 Americans killed.  The Second War for American Independence ended America’s practical colonial status.  America had won the war, the economy was booming, and, in 1816, Monroe did not even bother to campaign.

H. The Era of Good Feelings, 1816-1824
           1. President Monroe took a good will tour and was warmly welcomed all along the way.  In Boston, The Columbian Centinel, a Federalist newspaper, wrote, “An era of good feelings has been ushered in.”  He continued westward to Niagara and Detroit and southward through Ohio.
         2. A rush of nationalism
                   a. The war had not been widely supported.  The US had hardly distinguished itself, save perhaps at Lake Erie when, after his stunning victory, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry declared, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”  Britain had not given the little sideshow much attention.  Jackson ’s glorious victory at New Orleans was two weeks after the signing of the Treaty of Ghent.  After the war, however, there was the flowering of a new nationalism.  America was the best because it had beaten the best.
                   b. Even after the Revolution, Europe had continued to dominate America .  There had been the Proclamation of Neutrality, the XYZ Affair, the war with Tripoli , the Louisiana Purchase , impressments, and the embargo.  After the Second War for American Independence, the US turned its back on Europe and focused on internal growth.  Except for trade, the US would not be seriously involved in the affairs of Europe for one hundred years.
         3. Cultural nationalism
             After the Revolution, Americans continued to devour English novels and plays.  American artists like Benjamin West, Gilbert Stewart, and John Singleton Copely had trained in Britain .  Now American literature and art would turn to distinctively American themes.
                   a. Washington Irving wrote The Sketchbook (1820).  The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was about the headless horseman, and Icabod Crane, and Americans in America.  Gone were settings in the moor and the heather and the glen.  At a time of rapid expansion, Rip van Winkle had a note of nostalgia for “that happy age when a man can be idle with impunity.”
                   b. James Fenimore Cooper wrote the Leatherstocking Tales, including The Last of the Mohicans and The Deerslayer, that embodied Rousseau’s notion of the noble savage who had been untouched by European civilization.
                   c. The Hudson River School of artists (1825-1870), who were called luminists, painted the grandeur and beauty of the American landscape.
         4. Political nationalism
              Henry Clay’s American System was an attempt to stimulate economic growth by improving transportation and westward expansion.
                   a. The US needed a stable economy and a source of loans for expansion.  In 1816, the Second Bank of the United States received a twenty year charter. 
                   b. The Tariff of 1816 imposed taxes on imported manufactured goods that averaged 20% ad valorem (of value).  Tariffs protected favored industries and were the federal government’s primary source of revenue.  Britain was dumping low-cost goods in the US, and, Clay said, "jealous of the youthful Hercules, aimed to strangle American manufactures in the cradle."  Revenue from the tariff revenue would fund internal improvements.
                    c. internal improvements
                        The transportation revolution could move people westward and farm produce to eastern markets.  It promoted a spirit of national unity and connected Easterners and Westerners.
                              1) The National Road, a.k.a. the Cumberland Road, went from Maryland to Illinois.  It was constructed primarily to promote trade and communication with the Old Northwest.  Another section of the National Road went from Ohio to Alabama. 
                              2) The Maysville Road Veto (1830)
                                  Congress voted to fund a sixty-mile segment of the National Road from Maysville to Lexington within the state of Kentucky.  President Andrew Jackson vetoed this bill because the Maysville Turnpike was not interstate.  There were political motivations as well.  Jackson wanted to curb wasteful spending and corruption.  Henry Clay was a Kentuckian, and Clay hated Jackson.  The veto also struck a blow for states’ rights.  Washington City would not control this local project.
                             3) The Erie Canal (built 1817-1825) went from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.  It was funded by private investors and the State of New York, not by the federal government.  It connected eastern manufacturers and “western” farmers.  Two horses or mules pulling a typical boat seventy-seven feet long, weighing fifty tons, five miles an hour, had an extraordinary advantage over wagon transport.  The cost of transportation fell by 90%.  Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo boomed.  Although the steamboat was invented in 1790, it did not operate on canals.  The first railroad in the USA was built in 1825, but railroads did not spread appreciably until the 1840s.
                    d. The market revolution (1815-1860) saw the growth of inventions (cotton gin), transportation (Erie Canal, steamboat, railroad), immigration, manufacturing primarily for domestic consumption, and a protective tariff.
                    e. reactions of the sections to the American System
                              1) The Northeast supported the Second Bank of the US which granted loans for business expansion.  The South and West opposed the bank because of the high interest rates it charged on loans to planters.
                              2) At first, the support of the tariff in the Northeast was mixed.  Shippers opposed it because they feared that it would hurt import trade.  When manufacturing became its economic base, however, the northeast became the strongest supporter of the protective tariff.  The South opposed it.  It resented the increased cost of imports, and it feared a retaliatory tariff on its cotton exports.  The Northwest favored the tariff because it hoped that protectionism would expand manufacturing in the Northeast and create a greater market for western produce.
                               3) The Northeast favored federal funding of internal improvements because roads would facilitate the transport of its manufactured goods.  The Northwest favored it because most of the road building would be in the West.  The South opposed it because the South benefited little from road and canal construction, and its market was not in the West.
          5. Transportation between 1800 and 1850 went from horseback and Conestoga wagons to barges, steamboats, and railroads.  There were about three million immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s.  Many were Irish who fled the potato famines in 1845 and 1846.  There were also many Germans and Scots.
          6. Alexis de Tocqueville visited the USA (1831) and wrote in Democracy in America, “In America, men are nearer equality than in any other country in the world.”  Although there was wealth and poverty, a rigid class system was not enforced by the government or custom.  There was economic opportunity due to the seemingly limitless amount of land in the West and the absence of an exclusive aristocracy.  While he deplored the forced migration of Native Americans, he glossed over slavery and gender inequity.

I. Nationalism in the Courts
    John Marshall, a Federalist, was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (1801-1835).  The Marshall Court overturned unconstitutional acts of Congress, upheld the power of the Congress and US Supreme Court over state legislatures and courts when they conflicted with the US Constitution, and defended property rights and the Bank of the United States .  During the era from Jefferson to Jackson , the Federalists cheered from their tombs.
          1. Marbury v. Madison (1803)
                    a. the facts:
                              1) Attempting to leave behind some semblance of stability as the Revolution of 1800 approached, President John Adams filled government vacancies with loyal Federalists.  Marshall was appointed in January 1801.  William Marbury was appointed a justice of the peace, which was within the judicial branch of the federal government.  The lame duck Federalist Congress passed the Judiciary Act of 1801 that created sixteen new circuit court judgeships, and in the late hours of his last day in office, John Adams filled them with “the midnight judges.”
                              2) The Democratic-Republican majority in Congress repealed the Judiciary Act of 1801, eliminating the sixteen judgeships, and President Jefferson ordered Secretary of State James Madison to withhold the commissions of any appointees to the judicial branch who had not been sworn in, including that of William Marbury.  Marbury appealed to Marshall’s court to issue a writ of mandamus, a court order, ordering Madison to give him his job.
                    b. the issue:                       
                        The Judiciary Act of 1789 had authorized the federal courts to issue a writ of mandamus.  Did Congress have the power to give the Supreme Court its powers?
                    c. the holding:
                        The Judiciary Act of 1789 was unconstitutional.  The federal judiciary derives its powers from the Constitution, not from the Congress.  The Supreme Court’s declaring an act of Congress unconstitutional is called judicial review. 
                    d. Marshall wrote that the administration was derelict in its duty to deliver the commission to Marbury, but he stopped short of issuing a court order that Madison carry it out.  This sweeping decision defined a power of the Supreme Court, overturned an unconstitutional act of Congress, and contradicted a states’ rights doctrine of Jefferson and Madison.
          2. Fletcher v. Peck (1810), “The Yazoo Land Fraud”
                    a. the facts:
                        The Georgia Legislature, swayed by bribery, had granted large tracts of land (including present Alabama and Mississippi) to developers.  A year later, the Georgia Legislature revoked the fraudulent land grant.
                    b. the issue: Must a state uphold a contract?
                    c. the holding:
                        A land grant by a state legislature is a contract, and the US Constitution prevents states from impairing contracts.  Marshall ruled that it was not the province of the court to consider the motives of legislators in passing an act.  The decision upheld the authority of the US Supreme Court over an act of state legislature that conflicted with the US Constitution.
          3. Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819)
                    a. the facts:
                        Dartmouth College had been granted a charter by King George III in 1769.  In 1816, the New Hampshire Legislature altered the charter and changed Dartmouth from a private college to a public institution.  Daniel Webster, its most famous alumnus, brought Dartmouth’s appeal to the Supreme Court.  “It is, sir, a small college, and yet there are those who love it.”
                     b. the holding:
                         A charter is a contract, and it must stand.  The decision protected corporations that held long standing contracts from adjustment to changing times.  It asserted the power of the US Supreme Court to overturn an act of a state legislature that violated the US Constitution.
          4. McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
                    a. the facts:
                        The Maryland Legislature had imposed a tax on the transactions of all banks in Maryland, including a branch of the Bank of the US in Maryland.  The Bank of the US retained Webster to present its appeal to the US Supreme Court.
                    b. the holding:
                        The Bank of the US is constitutional.  “The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
                    c. the rationale:
                              1) Congress had the power to establish the Bank of the US under the implied powers (the elastic clause).
                              2) A state government is not superior to the US government; therefore, a state does not have the power to tax a federal institution. 
          5. Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), “The Steamboat Case”
                    a. the facts:
                        In 1798, the New York Legislature had granted an exclusive contract to a steamboat company, now owned by Aaron Ogden, to operate on the waters of New York State.  Later, the New York Legislature granted Thomas Gibbons the right to operate his steamboats on the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey.  Gibbons had also obtained a license for his business from the federal government’s office of interstate commerce.  Ogden petitioned the New York Supreme Court to issue a restraining order against Gibbons.  Ogden won.  Gibbons retained Webster to bring his appeal to the US Supreme Court.
                    b. the holding:
                        Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce, and Gibbons’s license from the federal government stands.  The US Supreme Court overturned a ruling of a state supreme court when it conflicted with the US Constitution.  This decision dealt a severe blow to states’ rights.
          6. Martin v. Hunter’s Lassee (1816);  Cohens v. Virginia (1821)
              Both cases asserted the right of the Supreme Court to overrule the decisions of state courts when they conflicted with the US Constitution.

J. The Corrupt Bargain, 1824
  1. In 1824, no presidential candidate stood out as the inevitable successor to the generation of presidents that had won the Revolution and written the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  Each section of the country had its favorite son.  He suffered a stroke in 1823.
                   a. William Crawford was the Secretary of the Treasury, was a pro states’ rights southerner, and was supported by slave-holding plantation owners.
                   b. John Quincy Adams was the son of a president, the favorite son of New England , and the candidate of the National Republican Party.  He had been an ambassador to Holland and England , a US senator, and Monroe s Secretary of State.
                   c. Andrew Jackson was the first strong candidate from the frontier.  The Old Hero of New Orleans had fought the Seminoles and Creeks and was the military governor of Florida.
                   d. Henry Clay was a Kentuckian and a favorite son of the West.  He was elected the Speaker of the House in 1811 and was the author of the American System in 1816 and of the Missouri Compromise in 1820 (Missouri was admitted as a slave state, Maine as a free state, and slavery was excluded in the former Louisiana Territory north of latitude 36o 30’).  Later, he was a US senator and a presidential candidate in 1832 and 1844.  In 1834, he founded the anti-Jackson Whig Party.  He would be the author of the Compromise Tariff in 1833 and the Compromise of 1850 and would be called the Great Compromiser and the Great Pacificator.
         2. Jackson received 99 electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37.  Since no candidate had ½ + 1 of the total number of electoral votes, the election was decided in the House of Representatives, which considered the top three candidates. Clay saw Jackson as his greatest obstacle to the White House and threw his support to Adams .  Thirteen states voted for Adams, seven for Jackson, and four for Crawford.
         3. The Jacksonians accused Adams of striking a “corrupt bargain” with Clay: the presidency for an appointment to secretary of state which seemed to be validated when Clay was named secretary of state.  The frontiersmen were livid.  Washington insiders had stolen the election from Old Hickory, they believed, and the campaign for 1828 began before Adams was inaugurated.