American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

It started out by claiming victory—not over the British, but over Algiers, where Captain Stephen Decatur had recently exacted a peace agreement from the Dey after a brilliant attack and had gone on to gain similar guarantees from Tunis and Tripoli. If this pleased the members of Congress, the mood swiftly changed as the President came to his proposals. He called for expanded defense, “both fixed and floating,” and for more skilled and disciplined state militias. He asked for tariff protection for young manufacturing establishments. He talked about the need for the “General Government” to build roads and canals, and to make rivers more navigable, provided that such steps were—or could be made—constitutional. And he said, in words that were as startling in substance as mild in form, “If the operation of the State banks cannot produce this result”—a uniform national currency—“the probable operation of a national bank will merit consideration.”

  Stepped-up defense in peacetime? Tariffs? Internal improvements? A national bank? What heretical doctrine was this? And from the pen of James Madison, second only to Jefferson among Republican founding fathers? Then and later the “old Republicans” brought out their sacred texts. “The evil of the times is a spirit engendered in this republic, fatal to Republican principles; fatal to Republican virtue;”, cried John Randolph, “a spirit to live by any means but those of honest industry; a spirit of profusion;…a spirit of expediency not only in public but in private life.…There are very few who dare to speak truth to this mammoth. The banks are so linked together with the business of the world that there are very few men exempt from their influence.”

  Only a few congressmen realized that they were witnessing a profound shift in the Republican party—a shift that would alter the nation’s politics for decades to come. In its many rooms, the mansion of Republicanism had always had a place for activist, mercantilist policies of government support for economic development. Gallatin, in a series of masterly reports in the last year of Jefferson’s presidency, had called for a national transportation and communications network as part of a ten-year plan that, William Appleman Williams has commented, “made Hamilton appear a fumbling amateur.” Then had come war, always the forcing house of economic change. The federal government had become deeply involved in raising and spending money, promoting industry such as iron foundries and ship manufacture.

  Younger, more entrepreneurial Republicans like Henry Clay shucked off the old Republican bias against federal economic action. Madison himself, under the pressure of war, shifted his ground. “Altho’ I approve the policy of leaving to the sagacity of individuals, and to the impulse of private interest, the application of industry & capital,” he wrote a correspondent a few months after leaving the White House, “I am equally persuaded, that in this as in other cases, there are exceptions to the general rule, which do not impair the principle of it. Among these exceptions, is the policy of encouraging domestic manufacturers, within certain limits, and in reference to certain articles.”

  Out of the old Republican party a new political force was arising, more nationalist, more entrepreneurial, more interventionist than the old. Politicians were switching sides. Madison, who had vetoed a bank bill in January 1815, signed, hardly fifteen months later, a measure creating the Second Bank of the United States, capitalized with the huge sum of $35 million. Calhoun had introduced the bill; Clay, who five years before had argued that such a bill was unconstitutional, left the Speaker’s chair to explain why he had changed his mind; and Federalists, advocates of the first United States bank only two decades before, largely voted against it. So many “old” Republicans joined Federalists against the bill as almost to defeat the measure in the House. The bank began operating at the start of 1817.

  More was involved in all this than economic and political change. The very spirit and character of the nation seemed altered after the war. In part this was a matter of self-satisfaction and celebration. “I can indulge the proud reflection that the American people have reached in safety and success their fortieth year as an independent nation,” Madison said in his last message to Congress, in December 1816; “that for nearly an entire generation they have had experience of their present Constitution,” and “have found it to bear the trials of adverse as well as prosperous circumstances; to contain in its combination of the federate and elective principles a reconcilement of public strength with individual liberty, of national power for the defense of national rights with a security against wars of injustice.…”

  The “reconcilement of public strength” and “individual liberty”—this was the essence of the political achievement. But the spirit of 1816 and 1817 went beyond this. It was a feeling of self-confidence, of having won—or so it was thought—America’s “second war of independence.” It was the boast that America now had established herself in the family of nations as a power that must be respected. It was the notion that at last Americans had achieved a sense of self-identity, of spirit, of earned esteem and hence of self-esteem. “A great object of the war has been attained in the firm establishment of the national character,” Clay told officials of the city of Washington on returning from Europe in September 1815.

  Few Americans embodied this spirit more visibly than James Monroe, the heir apparent to the presidency. “The experiment” of war, he said, “was made under circumstances the most unfavorable to the United States, and the most favorable to the very powerful nation with whom we were engaged. The demonstration is satisfactory that our Union has gained strength, our troops honor, and the nation character, by the contest.” Now in his late fifties, Monroe, with his big strapping frame, erect bearing, and plain, deep-lined face, looked more like a leader of the Virginia gentry than of the “Virginia dynasty.” Less reflective, philosophical, or profound than his mentors Jefferson and Madison, he was known as a man of common sense, good judgment, and courage. He was deeply experienced, as Revolutionary officer, Continental Congressman, United States senator, diplomat, governor of Virginia, and Secretary of State doubling as Secretary of War during the final critical months of the war. Monroe’s thinking had changed considerably since the days when he opposed the Constitution because it vested too much power in the chief executive. Now he looked forward to being a strong President of a strong nation.

  Not all supported this ambition. Even in Virginia, the foundation of Monroe’s support, “old Republicans” were hostile to his candidacy. Once again the party’s nomination would be decided by “King Caucus,” the traditional meeting of Republican members of Congress, but here Monroe faced formidable opposition in Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford. In turn senator from Georgia, Minister to France, and Secretary of War, before taking over Treasury, Crawford was almost as experienced as Monroe; even more, the tall, ruddy-faced Georgian was the kind of orator, superb storyteller, and genial handshaker that endeared a leader to politicians in both houses. He also benefited from a widespread feeling that it was time to curb the Virginia dynasty and Virginia influence. This feeling was strongest in the Empire State, which had provided the nation with neither President nor emperor, but New Yorkers were divided between supporters of the politico and reformer De Witt Clinton and of the rising young state politician Martin Van Buren.

  The machinations of 1816 are still not wholly clear, but it probably was the Crawfordites who posted an anonymous notice calling Republican senators and representatives to a nominating session. Monroe’s supporters boycotted this rump caucus, which attracted so embarrassingly few members that it could only summon a second caucus. At this point Crawford seems to have experienced a failure of nerve. It was not easy to take on the senior member of the Cabinet; moreover, at the age of forty-four, the Georgian felt he could wait a presidential term or two and run again in 1824 at the latest. At the second caucus Monroe beat him by the unimpressive margin of 65 to 54.

  The Federalist party was so weak in 1816 that Monroe’s nomination was tantamount to election. The party of Washington and Hamilton chose the veteran New York politician Rufus King, and then failed to unite
its thin support even behind him. Monroe vanquished him in the electoral college, 183-34, with the shrunken Federalists monotonously clinging to their majorities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. The Virginia dynasty stood fast.

  “The American people,” President James Monroe said in his Inaugural Address, “…constitute one great family with a common interest.” The government had been in the hands of the People. The People had built and sustained the Union. Only when “the People become ignorant and corrupt” did they become the “willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin.” Hence: “Let us, by all wise and constitutional measures, promote intelligence among the People, as the best means of preserving our liberties.”

  To many, this paean to the People was so much Republican oratory. But Monroe was not just indulging in cant. He had a plan based on a hypothesis that, as he wrote Andrew Jackson, “the existence of parties is not necessary to free government.…” His plan was no less than to rid the nation of party rivalry. Inheriting Jefferson’s theoretical dislike (though actual utilization) of party, Monroe would go far beyond him. Whereas Jefferson proposed to win over moderate Federalists, isolate “monarchical” types, and build a new party, Monroe proposed to offer the Federalists the chance to “get back in the great family of the union,” thus to broaden the Republican ranks, and then to govern on behalf of the whole People, the American Family, the national consensus.

  “The nation has become tired of the follies of faction,” Nicholas Biddle said after the election.

  To raise his administration above party rivalry, to speak for the American family, to act on the national consensus, Monroe resolved on a glittering ministry, a Cabinet of all the talents, a leadership from all the sections. From the East, for Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams. From the West, for Secretary of War, Henry Clay. From the South, for Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Crawford. But not all the leaders were willing to crowd into the new President’s tent. In particular Henry Clay, sorely disappointed that he had not been proffered State, declined War. Unable to find for this post another Westerner of sufficient stature or caliber, Monroe appointed the brilliant young Southerner John Calhoun, who was rising to an eminence that would rival Clay’s. All these men were Republicans. Where were the Federalists in this non-party administration? Monroe said he wanted to give the opposition a chance for reconciliation but he appointed few Federalists, mainly out of fear of alienating Republicans. Federalists did not protest unduly. They could forgo Republican patronage, they calculated, as long as Monroe seemed to embrace Federalist policies.

  If Americans were now to be one family with the President as their father, a grand tour seemed a fine way to demonstrate popular support for the new leader. Three months after his inauguration, Monroe, accompanied by a small party, set off for New England. He was greeted by friendly crowds and subjected to parades, reviews, and tours all the way up the eastern seaboard, but enthusiasm rose to a pitch in Boston. Was the old city making up for its long coolness to Virginia dynasts? Forty thousand persons, it was estimated, lined the streets and filled every window as the presidential party moved through the streets to Boston Common. Over the next few days Monroe inspected defenses, greeted delegations, reviewed troops, toured the Watertown arsenal and a Waltham cotton factory, heard Edward Channing orate in Faneuil Hall and William Ellery Channing preach a Unitarian sermon, visited Bunker Hill and “Old Ironsides,” and drove to Harvard, where he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree amid much pomp and circumstance. Just as he hoped, Federalists—including even his old foe Timothy Pickering—greeted him warmly. Indeed, the main political problem was the unseemly jockeying between Republican and Federalist leaders to honor the President; even this kind of party rivalry disturbed the grand harmonizer.

  So Monroe could reign; could he rule? Madison had bequeathed him some issues that did not admit of easy conciliation. One was the bank, which actually began operations only a few weeks before Monroe took office and generated controversy by its mere existence. Another was federally subsidized internal improvements, especially roads.

  Westerners in particular had been clamoring for better connections with the market centers of the eastern seaboard. The typical inland road of the time was still a rough and meandering strip of rutted earth that often might turn into a bog that could swallow carriage wheels, or into a streambed that could break them. In his last annual message to Congress, Madison had favored a federally financed network of roads and canals, but he believed that a constitutional amendment was necessary before the federal government could undertake such a project. Calhoun, arguing that internal improvements were sanctioned by the general welfare clause of the Constitution, had helped push a bill through a closely divided House and Senate, only to see Madison veto it the day before he left the White House. Early in Monroe’s presidency George Tucker of Virginia presented a report by the House Committee on Internal Improvements affirming the power of Congress to construct roads and canals. Monroe anxiously consulted with ex-President Madison.

  This time it was Henry Clay of Kentucky who took on a foot-dragging Virginia President. Rarely had “Harry of the West” so brilliantly commanded the floor of the House. Treating his foes with exquisite courtesy, mixing heavy constitutional arguments with stiletto thrusts, he touched on Monroe’s regal tour, with his loyal subjects rising to salute the “entrance of the sovereign,” and he sarcastically exploited Monroe’s inconsistencies and the inadequacies of his constitutional arguments. The President, he said, had given the House only “an historical account of the operations of his own mind.” Friends of the Administration rose to rebut him, but he brushed them off like so many flies. His constitutional arguments were hardly new; they were the Hamiltonian case for federal power. But Hamilton, the proponent of executive power, would hardly have accepted Clay’s attack on Monroe’s supporters for ascribing “imperial powers” to their chief.

  Clay bluntly attacked Monroe’s idea of rising above party. “We are told,” the Speaker said acidly, “that in these halcyon days there is no such thing as party spirit; that the factions by which the country has been divided, are reduced to their primitive elements, and that this whole society is united by brotherly love and friendship.…Sir, I do not believe in this harmony, this extinction of party spirit, which is spoken of; I do not believe that men have ceased to be men, or that they have abandoned those principles on which they have always acted hitherto.”

  The President hardly needed Clay to remind him of the difficulties of partyless government. It was soon clear that if men did not divide into two parties, they would divide into countless factions within parties. To govern without party support, moreover, meant that the President lacked allies when he needed them. And he needed them most when the going was rough—most notably after the Panic of 1819.

  The causes of that panic were manifold—worldwide readjustments after the Napoleonic wars, overexpansion of credit, low prices of imports from Europe—but the debtors of Kentucky and South Carolina and other western and southern states did not look for remote sources of their troubles when their loans were called in or their mortgages were foreclosed. Nor did the tradespeople and laborers who lost their jobs. The culprit was tangible and visible—the United States Bank. Though the bank’s desperate efforts to save itself were a sign more of weakness than of strength, this was a time for hyperbole. “All the flourishing cities of the West are mortgaged to this money power,” said Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri later. “They may be devoured by it at any moment. They are in the jaws of the monster!” Someone else said: “The Bank was saved, and the people were ruined.”

  An even harsher challenge to the “era of good feelings” came shortly—a flare-up over slavery. This issue, it was true, had not yet achieved formidable proportions, and even now it did not rise as an issue in itself, but was suddenly projected into Washington politics when the Missouri Territorial Assembly petitioned Congress for statehood. At this time the twenty-two states in the Union wer
e equally divided between slave states and free. This was no coincidence, since the respective political weight of North and South had been carefully balanced by the alternate admission of free and slave states. Despite the three-fifths rule, the free states had 105 votes in the House, the slave states 81. But the Southerners counted on the equal vote in the Senate to sustain the political balance.

  Maintaining that balance was the central thrust of the political efforts of 1820 that later came to be known as the Missouri Compromise. The legislative path to compromise was long and tortuous, as northern legislators tried to limit slavery in Missouri and to the west, and were beaten back by southern lawmakers. Representative James Tallmadge of New York sought to amend the Missouri statehood legislation by prohibiting the further introduction of slaves into the state and requiring that all children born of slaves in Missouri be freed at the age of twenty-five. The House passed this amendment; the Senate killed it. When the organization of Arkansas Territory came before Congress, John W. Taylor of Saratoga County, another New York congressman who shared Tallmadge’s moral objection to the extension of slavery, moved to prohibit its further expansion. This was defeated, and Congress admitted Arkansas with no curb on slavery. After Maine had freed itself of Massachusetts and petitioned for admission, Maine was used as a counter to Missouri. When the Senate coupled the admission of Maine and Missouri, Senator Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois proposed an amendment providing that Missouri be admitted as a slave state but that, in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase, slavery be barred north of latitude 36º30?. This amendment the Senate passed, but the House balked. After considerable attitudinizing, confronting, foot dragging, and dickering, Maine was admitted as a free state, Missouri as a slave state, and the northern boundary of slavery was fixed at 36º30?.

  This was the “Missouri Compromise,” but the compromising was not over. Missourians soon met in convention in St. Louis and adopted a constitution empowering the legislature to exclude free Negroes and mulattoes from the state. Feeling betrayed, the compromisers for the North, with the powerful help of Henry Clay, arranged the “Second Missouri Compromise,” stipulating that Missouri would not finally be admitted until the legislature promised that nothing in her constitution could be interpreted as sanctioning the abridgment of the privileges and immunities of United States citizens. On that basis Missouri was admitted. Later, the state repudiated this undertaking.