American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  [John Randolph versus a national bank]: quoted in William Cabell Bruce, John Randolph of Roanoke (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1922), Vol. 1, p. 431.

  [Williams on Gallatin’s reports]: William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (World, 1961).

  [Madison’s shifting economic views]: Madison to D. Lynch, June 27, 1817, Hunt, Vol. 8, P· 392

  [The Second United States Bank]: Bray Hammond, Banks and Politics in America (Princeton University Press, 1957), esp. Ch. 9.

  [Madison on America’s fortieth year as an independent nation]: Eighth Annual Message, Dec. 3, 1816, Hunt, Vol. 8, pp. 375-85, 383-84.

  [Clay on the establishment of the national character]: Clay to Officials of the City of Washington, Sept. 18, 1815, Hopkins, Vol. 2 (1961), p. 63.

  [Monroe on the experiment of war]: quoted in Harry Ammon, The Quest for National Identity, (McGraw-Hill, 1971), p. 344.

  [New York State politics]: Shaw Livermore, Jr., The Twilight of Federalism (Princeton University Press, 1962).

  [Monroe’s Inaugural Address, March 4, 1817]: Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, ed., The Writings of James Monroe (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), Vol. 6, pp. 6-16.

  [Monroe on parties as unnecessary]: Monroe to Andrew Jackson, Dec. 14, 1816, Hamilton, Vol. 5, p. 346.

  [Monroe on inviting Federalists to rejoin the “family of the union”]: Rives Papers, July 27, 1817, Library of Congress, quoted in Ammon, p. 377.

  [Biddle on the follies of faction]: quoted in Ammon, p. 367.

  [Clay on “entrance of the sovereign”]: Henry Clay, “Speech on Internal Improvements,” March 7, 1818, Hopkins, Vol. 2, p. 452.

  [Clay on Monroe’s constitutional arguments]: ibid, March 13, 1818, p. 483.

  [Clay on Monroe’s anti-party beliefs]: ibid., March 7, 1818, p. 452.

  [Bank politics and comments]: Hammond, Chs. 9 and 10, quoted at p. 259.

  [Politics of slavery]: Clover Moore, The Missouri Controversy (University Press of Kentucky, 1966); Donald L. Robinson, Slavery in the Structure of American Politics, 1765-1820 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).

  [Role of Rep. James Tallmadge]: James Tallmadge Papers, New-York Historical Society; see also John W. Taylor Papers, New-York Historical Society.

  [Moore on the nature of the North-South agreement]: Moore, p. 111.

  [Jefferson on the fire bell in the night and having the wolf by the ears]: Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, in Paul Leicester Ford, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897), Vol. 10, p. 157.

  Adams’ Diplomacy and Monroe’s Dictum

  [Madison on Spanish hostility toward his administration]: Madison to John Graham, circa June 1, 1816, Hunt, Vol. 8, p. 345.

  [East and West Florida as a pistol aimed at the Mississippi]: Bemis, p. 302.

  [Conversation between Adams and Castlereagh]: Bemis, p. 304. I have used Bemis’ rendition of Adams’ indirect quotation of these (and other) conversations into direct quotations, drawn from Adams’ Memoirs. I have also retained Bemis’ italics.

  [Turmoil in Florida]: Bailey, pp. 167-68.

  [The Seminoles]: see Robert Spencer Cotterill, The Southern Indians (University of Oklahoma Press, 1954); Edwin C. McReynolds, The Seminoles (University of Oklahoma Press, 1957); John R. Swanton, Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 73 (Government Printing Office, 1922).

  [Jackson to Monroe on seizing Florida]: quoted in George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism (Harper & Row, 1965), p. 46; see also Bemis, pp. 313-14.

  [Rush reports English resentment toward Jackson]: Bailey, pp. 169-70.

  [Niles’ Weekly Register on Jackson’s popularity]: ibid., p. 170.

  [Clay’s views]: see esp. Clay’s speech in the House of Representatives on the Seminole War, Jan. 20, 1819, Hopkins, Vol. 2, pp. 636-60.

  [Monroe on his three main goals after the Florida incursion]: Monroe to James Madison, Feb. 7, 1819, Hamilton, Vol. 6, pp. 87-88.

  [Adams-Onís negotiations]: see Philip Coolidge Brooks, Diplomacy and the Borderlands: The Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 (University of California Press, 1939).

  [Adams on the most important day of his life]: Adams, Memoirs, Feb. 22, 1819, Vol. 4, p. 274.

  [Internal British politics and foreign policy prior to the Monroe Doctrine]: Dangerfield, Ch. 5, passim. See also Bemis, Ch. 18.

  [Canning’s proffer of Anglo-American cooperation]: see esp. Richard Rush to John Quincy Adams, Sept. 19, 1823, Hamilton, Vol. 6, pp. 377-86.

  [Madison on liberty and despotism]: Madison to Jefferson, Nov. 1, 1823, ibid., pp. 395-96.

  [Cabinet discussion of proposed Anglo-American cooperation]: Adams, Memoirs, Vol 6, pp. 177-81, as rendered by Bemis, pp. 384-85. Italics are Bemis’.

  [Expectation that European powers will not interfere in America]: Adams, quoted in Bemis, p. 387.

  [Key provisions of the Monroe Doctrine]: Hamilton, Vol. 6, pp. 328, 340, italics added.

  [European response to enunciation of the Monroe Doctrine]: quoted in Dangerfield, p. 190; in Bailey, p. 189 (Metternich); in Bemis, p. 403 n. (Lafayette to John Quincy Adams).

  [Economic aspects of the Monroe Doctrine]: Williams, esp. pp. 215-18.

  [The Monroe Doctrine]: Dexter Perkins, A History of the Monroe Doctrine (Little, Brown, 1955); Donald Marquand Dozer, The Monroe Doctrine: Its Modern Significance (Alfred A. Knopf, 1965); Worthington C. Ford, “John Quincy Adams and the Monroe Doctrine,” American Historical Review, Vol. 7, No. 4 (July 1902). pp. 676-96; William S. Robertson, “The Monroe Doctrine Abroad in 1823-24,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 6, No. 4 (November 1912), pp. 546-63; Marie B. Hecht, John Quincy Adams (Macmillan, 1972), Ch. 15.

  [Salvador de Madariaga on the Monroe Doctrine]: quoted in Dozer, p. vii.

  [Sources and dilemmas in American foreign policy and strategy]: Hans J. Morgenthau, in Defense of the National Interest (Alfred A. Knopf, 1952); Felix Gilbert, To the Farewell Address (Princeton University Press, 1961); Paul A. Varg, Foreign Policies of the Founding Fathers (Michigan State University Press, 1963); Robert E. Osgood, Ideals and Self-interest in America’s Foreign Relations (University of Chicago Press, 1953).

  [Hamilton on morality of nations]: quoted in Morgenthau, pp. 14-18, italics in original.

  [Morgenthau on John Quincy Adams]: Morgenthau, p. 22.

  Virginians: The Last of the Gentlemen Politicians

  [The Crawford incident]: diary entry of John Quincy Adams. Dec. 14, 1825, Adams, Memoirs, Vol. 7, pp. 80-81; Samuel L. Southard to Samuel L. Gouverneur, Sept. 3, 1831, quoted in Ammon, pp. 543-44.

  [Description of Jefferson in his last years]: quoted in Nathan Schachner, Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Yoseloff, 1951), p. 997.

  [The Virginia environment and history]: Matthew Page Andrews, Virginia: The Old Dominion (Doubleday, Doran, 1937); Edmund S. Morgan, Virginians at Home (Colonial Williamsburg. 1952); Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Virginia (W. W. Norton, 1977); Richard L. Morton, .Colonial Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, i960). Vol. 2.

  [Virginia, social and political aspects]: Robert E. Brown and Katherine Brown, Virginia 1705-1786: Democracy or Aristocracy? (Michigan State University Press, 1964); Abbot Emerson Smith, Colonists in Bondage (University of North Carolina Press, 1947).

  [Collective intellectual leadership in Virginia]: Richard Beale Davis, Intellectual Life in Jefferson’s Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 4.

  [Robert Carter’s library]: Louis Morton, Robert Carter of Nomini Hall (University Press of Virginia, 1945), pp. 214-16. [Bernard visit]: ibid., p. 216.

  [Never be born than ill bred]: quoted in Davis, p. 8; see also Andrews, p. 255, on private schools.

  [Morton on “curious contradiction”]: Morton, p. 214.

  [Henry Adams on the excellence of upper-class education in Virginia]: quoted in Davis, p. 1.

  [Individual education]: Morgan, pp. 16-18.

  [William and Mary]: Andrews, p. 323.

  [Scho
ol of Virginia Federalists]: David H. Fischer, The Revolution of American Conservatism (Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 370-87.

  [Life of John Randolph ]: Robert Dawidoff, The Education of John Randolph (W. W. Norton, 1979.

  [Malone’s description of Randolph]: Dumas Malone, ed., Dictionary of American Biography (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), Vol. 8, p. 366.

  [Randolph’s philosophy]: Dawidoff, pp. 32-33.

  [Marshall in McCulloch v. Maryland]: quoted in Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History, rev. ed. (Harper & Row, 1961), p. 158. [Ruling in Gibbons v. Ogden]: ibid,, p. 489.

  [The Yazoo claims and Fletcher v. Peck]: C. Peter Magrath, Yazoo: Law and Politics in the New Republic (Brown University Press, 1966).

  [Randolph denounces Yazooists]: ibid., p. 46.

  [Marshall on Georgia’s obligations]: ibid., p. 78.

  [Madison’s definition of tyranny]: James Madison etal, The Federalist (E.P. Dutton, 1937), No. 47, p. 245.

  [First- and second-generation intellectual leadership in Virginia, in relation to constitutional experimentation and development]: Davis, passim; Brown and Brown, passim; John T. Agresto, “Liberty, Virtue, and Republicanism: 1776-1787,” Review of Politics, Vol. 39, No. 4 (October 1977), pp. 473-504; George W. Carey, “Separation of Powers and the Madisonian Model: A Reply to the Critics,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 72, No. 1 (March 1978), pp. 151-64; Richard W. Krouse, “Two Concepts of Democratic Republicanism: Madison and Tocqueville on Pluralism and Party in American Politics,” paper prepared for delivery at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., Sept. 1977; Clinton Rossiter, The American Quest, 1790-1860 (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971).

  This section was written with the assistance of Jeffrey P. Trout.

  The Checking and Balancing of John Quincy Adams

  I have used this same title as a section title to describe James Madison’s presidency, in The Deadlock of Democracy (Prentice-Hall, 1963). I now consider this title more appropriate for John Quincy Adams’ presidency.

  [William Plumer’s electoral vote for John Quincy Adams in 1820]: Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union (Alfred A. Knopf, 1956), p. 12.

  [J.Q. Adams on William Crawford as a “worm,” etc. ]: ibid., p. 16, or Adams, Memoirs, Vol. 5, p. 315. ·

  [Preliminary developments, election of

  1824]: James F. Hopkins, “Election of 1824,” in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., History of American Presidential Elections (McGraw-Hill, 1971), Vol. 1, pp. 349-409; Hecht, Ch. 16; Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, Ch. 2; Hopkins, Vol. 3, passim.

  [Schoolteacher’s comment on the election]: Henry D. Ward to Ephraim Cutler, April 14, 1824, quoted in Dangerfield, p. 220.

  [Results of 1824 presidential election]: Svend Petersen, A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections (Frederick Ungar, 1963), pp. 17-18.

  [Dangerfield on Clay’s boardinghouse electioneering]: Dangerfield, p. 224.

  [J. Q Adams’ campaigning for support]: Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, pp. 36-37.

  [Clay to correspondents on the electoral situation]: Adams to James Erwin, Dec. 13, “1824, Hopkins, Vol. 3, p. 895; Clay to George McClure, Dec. 28, 1824, ibid., p. 906.

  [Webster’s mediation]: Schlesinger, p. 380; see Smith (cited below), p. 185.

  [Randolph on election]: Dangerfield, p. 228.

  [Jackson on the “Judas of the West”]: Jackson to William B. Lewis, Feb. 14, 1825, John S. Bassett, ed., Correspondence of Andrew Jackson (Carnegie Institute, 1928), Vol. 3, p. 276.

  [John Adams’ reaction to election]: Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, p. 48.

  [Notification of J. Q. Adams of his election]: ibid., p. 51; see Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society, Gaillard Hunt, ed. (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), p. 186.

  [Adams’ use of the term “National” government]: Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, p. 61.

  [Adams on the “perilous experiment”]: Adams, Memoirs, Vol. 7, p. 63 (diary entry of Nov. 26, 1825).

  [Congressional politics]: Tallmadge Family Papers, New-York Historical Society; John W. Taylor Papers, New-York Historical Society.

  [President Adams’ lack of political support]: Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, Ch. 5; Hecht, Ch. 18; Dangerfield, Ch. 9; Adams, Memoirs, passim.

  [J. Q Adams to his son on bewaring of “Trap doors”]: Adams to George Washington Adams, Dec. 31, 1826, quoted in Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, p. 88.

  [Politics behind the “tariff of abominations”]: Robert V. Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (Columbia University Press, 1959). pp. 170-85. See also Dangerfield, pp. 275-87; see generally Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization (Viking Press, 1946), Vol. 2, Ch. 22; Frank W. Taussig, Tariff History of the United States (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1931), pp. 82, 92.

  [Congressional tariff role]: Robert V. Remini, “Martin Van Buren and the Tariff of Abominations,” American Historical Review, Vol. 63, No. 4 (July 1958), pp. 903-17; Williams, pp. 230-35.

  [John Randolph on manufacturing a President]: quoted in Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Union, p. 90.

  [Dangerfield on Adams’ signing of the “tariff of abominations”]: Dangerfield, p. 283.

  Jubilee 1826: The Passing of the Heroes

  [Biblical admonition to celebrate the half-century]: Leviticus 25:10.

  [John Adams on his life drawing to an end]: Adams to Jefferson, Jan. 14, 1826, in Lester J. Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), Vol. 2, p. 613.

  [Adams-Jefferson exchange on the “homespun”]: ibid., pp. 290-93.

  [John Adams’ exchanges with Mercy Warren]: Page Smith, John Adams (Doubleday, 1962), Vol. 2, pp. 1087-88; “Mercy Otis Warren,” Dictionary of American Biography (including Adams’ comment on history as not the province of ladies).

  [Adams and Jefferson on children and on Abigail Adams’ death]: Cappon, pp. 508, 529.

  [Adams-Jefferson exchanges on checks and balances, parties, liberty]: ibid., pp. 334, 337, 340, 351, 534, 550.

  [Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence]: quoted in Fawn M. Brodie, Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History (W.. W. Norton, 1974), p. 468.

  [Celebrations of the Fourth of July in 1826]: John Murray Allison, Adams and Jefferson (University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), Ch. 7.

  [Death of Jefferson]: Brodie, p.468. [Death of Adams]: Smith, pp. 1136-37; Allan Nevins, ed., The Diary of John Quincy Adams (Frederick Ungar, 1951), pp. 360-61.

  8. THE BIRTH OF THE MACHINES

  [Whitney’s trip to Georgia]: Jeannette Mirsky and Allan Nevins, The World of Eli Whitney (Macmillan, 1952), pp. 50-55.

  [Eli Whitney on “moral world”]: Whitney to Josiah Stebbins, quoted in ibid., p. 130.

  [Southern agriculture in 1790]: John Allen Krout and Dixon Ryan Fox, The Completion of Independence (Macmillan, 1944), pp. 7-8.

  [Whitney on cotton boll]: letter of Eli Whitney to Eli Whitney, Sr., quoted in Mirsky and Nevins, p. 66.

  [Whitney’s “little model”]: ibid.

  [Whitney’s fight to protect rights to his cotton gin]: ibid., pp. 93-97.

  [Impact of the cotton gin on the American economy]: Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790-1860 (Prentice-Hall, 1961), p. 8.

  [Rise of the price of cotton and expanding cotton production in the South]: Paul W. Gales, The Farmer’s Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860 (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960), p. 8.

  [Southern journal on “indissoluble cord”]: De Bow’s Review, quoted in Paul S. Taylor, “Plantation Laborer before the Civil War,” Agricultural History, Vol. 28. No. 1 (January 954). p. 3.

  [Trade of New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston]: Krout and Fox, pp. 11-22.

  [Early career of Francis Cabot Lowell]: Hannah Josephson, The Golden Threads (Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1949), pp. 15-17.

  [Lowell’s leadership in cotto
n manufacture]: Robert K. Lamb, “The Entrepreneur and the Community,” in William Miller, ed., Men in Business: Essays on the Historical Role of the Entrepreneur (Harper & Brothers, 1951), pp. 106-7.

  [Early difficulties of transportation]: Edward C. Kirkland, A History of American Economic Life (Meredith, 1969), p. 133.

  [Early experiments in steam navigation]: described in Krout and Fox, pp. 229-30.

  [“Mania” for steam engines]: ibid., p. 230.

  [Traveler in Northwest Territory]: Samuel Williams of Chillicothe to Samuel W. Young, Esq., of Hillsboro, Virginia, in Niles’ Weekly Register, Vol. 11, No. 324 (January 11, 1817), quoted in Roscoe Carlyle Buley, The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period, 1815-184o (Indiana Historical Society, 1950), Vol. 1, p. 57.

  Farmers: The Jacks-of-All-Trades

  [Description of sheep shearing at Clermont]: Elkanah Watson, Men and Times of the Revolution, or Memoirs of Elkanah Watson (Dana, 1857), p. 394, quoted in George Dangerfield, Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746-1830 (Harcourt, Brace, 1960), p. 434. Description of Clermont estate: Alf Evers, The Catskills: From Wilderness to Woodstock (Doubleday, 1972), p. 239.

  [Average tenant farm and rent on Clermont estate]: Dangerfield, p. 190.

  [Excerpts from the diary of Thomas Coffin]: Robert H. George, “Life on a New Hampshire Farm, 1825-1835,” Historical New Hampshire, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Winter 1967), pp. 3-5.

  [Amount of wood needed by farmers each winter]: Paul W. Gates, “Problems of Agricultural History, 1790-1840,” Agricultural History, Vol, 46, No. 1 (January 1972), p. 37.

  [Spring tasks on New England farm]: listed in George, p. 9.

  [Description of average northern farm and farming methods]: Krout and Fox, pp. 92-93.

  [Jefferson on production of laborers]: James A Henretta, “Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-Industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1 (January 1978), p. 18.