1. Era of Good Feelings

2. War of 1812 Changes Republicans  Build a permanent professional army and navy  Second Bank of the United States  Internal improvements: National Road  Protective tariff: Tariff of 1816  Essentially adopted all of Hamilton’s ideas as their own  Federalists now in opposition  Republicans the only party by 1824

3. Panic of 1819  Worldwide economic panic  Collapse in cotton prices because of reduced British demand  Deflation  Land speculation and debts  Right: Crowd Outside the NYSE, October, 1929

4. Controversial Role of the Bank  BUS tightens credit  Stopped inflation, but slowed speculation  Made bank unpopular in South and West  Panic on scale similar to Great Depression  Generational memory  Front of Second Bank of the US Building in Philadelphia, PA by Peter Clericuzio, 2006

5. Bigger Crisis Looms: Missouri Controversy  By 1819, slavery all but dead in North  West of Mississippi River no clear boundary for slavery  1812-1819 Louisiana Purchase divided three ways Louisiana Arkansas Territory Missouri Territory  Thomas Cole, The Garden of Eden (1828)

6. Missouri Territory  Develops rapidly, especially St. Louis and up the Missouri River  Population reached for statehood  Congress prepares to discuss territory’s future

7. James Tallmadge and his amendments  NY Congressman, involved in ending slavery in New York  Proposed two amendments to a Missouri statehood bill No more slaves in MO Free all slaves born after 1820 at 25 Post nati emancipation  George Caleb Bingham, Fur Traders on the Missouri River, 1845

8. Stakes are high in Missouri debate  Three-fifths compromise gave disproportionate representation to South in House  Senate equally distributed, free and slave  Missouri would tip the balance one way or other

9. Northern viewpoints  Imbalance of representation already there  Messing with egalitarianism  National politics changing More democratic North gaining in population  Lithograph of US Capitol, ca. 1800

10. Southern viewpoints  South Carolina Senator William Smith, ca. 1820  Sour grapes over Southern power  Moderates rally to defend the region, regardless of views on slavery’s future  Each new state must decide for itself

11. Congressional debate begins in late 1819  No one arguing over the morality of slavery  The argument is over whether or not Congress could regulate slavery  Typical of early debates over slavery Morality not at issue Effect on the nation and is democracy more important

12. Can Congress regulate slavery?  Northerners generally insist that the answer is YES  Northwest Ordinance is the precedent

13. Can Congress regulate slavery?  Looney extreme: South Carolina says absolutely NO  Congress cannot bind states, ever  Fifth Amendment issue  Left: Flag of South Carolina

14. Can Congress regulate slavery?  For most Southerners in 1819, the answer is YES, BUT  Most believe slavery will eventually end on its own: Madison, Henry Clay and Thomas Jefferson, for example  But congressional moves against it will make matters worse

15. A complex argument  Expansion will kill slavery  Allow slavery to go west and two things will operate to kill it: Great American Desert Dilution of slave population will make whites more comfortable with ending it  These views nothing new in 1819  Most Southern leaders espouse them  Most believe perpetual slavery bad for country  Because morality off the table, people are willing to compromise  Only South Carolina arguing for the desirability and morality of slavery

16. Missouri Compromise  Begins in the Senate, but Clay makes it possible in the House  Maine to be brought in as a free state  Missouri will be a slave state  No slavery above 36°30” North longitude  Tallmadge Amendments buried

17. Crisis over slavery past for now  “This momentous question, like a firebell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.” Thomas Jefferson Right: Thomas Jefferson, by Rembrandt Peale, 1805