The Antebellum United States, Part I (1798-1824)

I have chosen to skip the period 1783-1798 in American history. It is an ambitious and difficult period to encapsulate in writing. However, by 1798, the basis of America's political legitimacy was assured, with many customs already set in place by first president George Washington.

By consensus of historians, the most influential event in American history was the US Civil War, fought from April 1861 to May 1865. This is well-known worldwide. However, even to astute Americans, it seems difficult to understand the prewar politics and balance of power that led to this war. There are so many causes and so many stories of everyone involved. It is astonishing to think that there were legendary statesmen like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun who all represented a portion of American political culture, who earnestly sought the most prudent diplomatic measures to avoid war as late as 1850, though barely over 10 years later war itself would spontaneously occur. Democratic procedures elected Lincoln as president, leading to arguably democratic measures throughout the South to elect new, secessionist governments in opposition to this result. With the people of the North standing by Lincoln, and the people of the South standing against him, it would seem that it was a popular war, in that the political circumstances to create it were driven by the people and not by backroom intrigue or cynical presidential ambitions. Unfortunately, it was a long, bloody, filthy, miserable, hateful war. In all of America's history we have never paid such a huge price in our nation's sons for any other cause.

Many of the political realities leading up to the Civil War were set in place by 1824. The Missouri Compromise, discussed later, was a crucial milestone. To make sense of the antebellum period, one must first venture to describe the War of 1812 and its causes.
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The War of 1812- A win-win situation

The personalities of the antebellum era are noted for little else other than their political cunning in maintenance of peace, both from external and internal events. However, as we shall see, they were enormously fortunate in that the foreign policy of Great Britain had evolved to the point in which there was little or no conflict of US-UK interests after the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815.

The fact that the then-infant United States did not break up and perish amid the Napoleonic Wars, is due directly to an increasing importance of Britain's other overseas colonies and the development of a powerful empire outside of North America. Perhaps if the Seven Years War had ended differently, with the British unable to annex India and push the French from this sphere of influence, then the British would have fought more tenaciously for the maintenance of their North American empire. One thing is clear- if, somehow, the British had been able to apply anything like the kind of strength in America that they had demonstrated against Napoleon, then the much-weaker Americans would have been utterly defeated and the states would have split up, perhaps with some of them annexed by the British Empire. In many ways, despite a few decades of independence and prodigious growth, America was weaker vis-a-vis the United Kingdom than it had been in 1775, when neither side yet enjoyed the fruit of the Industrial Revolution.

War with France

The American foreign policy was of short-tempered neutrality in the period 1798-1812. After the French Revolution and the fall of a government friendly to American interests, the Americans felt that their alliance to France was no longer valid, and they repudiated it.  Federalist President John Adams was anti-war with either European power, though the Federalist Party in general was sympathetic to Great Britain, and antagonistic towards France. By comparison, the Democratic Republican Party sympathized with the French republican government and so the war was a public image problem for them. The war was not a decisive success for either side, and the French decided to call off their privateers and naval attacks. It was considered a nominal victory for the United States, although the French had been more successful at hunting American merchant shipping than anyone had expected.

France's behavior towards the US government was provocative, with French officials demanding a large bribe in the XYZ Affair, followed by French attacks on American merchant shipping. The "Quasi-War" was subsequently fought between the US and France in 1798-1800. Historical accounts differ on the success of the war for the United States. Many merchant ships were lost, but the US Navy acquitted itself well, and gained valuable experience.

In the two nations of Great Britain and France could be found manifestations of the political alignments that were developing in America. Of course the government was fully independent, but it was too weak and immature to create entirely new traditions. When crafting an American society, Federalists hoped to emulate the stability, strength, and commonly-held social customs of the English (notwithstanding the war of revolution against that country), and obviously the Democratic-Republicans saw this as obsequious at best, and disloyal at worst.

On the other hand, any notion Jefferson and his cadre had nurtured of supporting the French Revolution became farfetched after the news of the mass executions became known, and the Quasi-War ended the dream permanently. Clearly, the United States would not ally itself with France.

War with Britain

Democratic Republicans took the presidency with Thomas Jefferson in 1800, and from that election onward they controlled the Congress solidly. Although the French cause had fallen out of favor in the American mainstream, President Jefferson was still virulently anti-British. Federalists squawked helplessly when Jefferson declared an embargo against trade with Europe, and when his successor James Madison laid the following claims about British behavior in front of the American people:

• Great Britain had impressed American seamen; this means they boarded American ships to kidnap sailors in violation of the sovereignty implied by the American flag flying above their vessels.
• Great Britain had issued "Orders in Council" which amounted to acts of war against any vessels that traded with Napoleon. The Americans howled ineffectually that this was a violation of international law and the principle of free trade.
• Great Britain did not recognize the right of the United States to naturalize foreign-born citizens. They believed that all seamen who were born British subjects were never free from their obligation to the Crown, and that these individuals could be permanently kidnapped and taken back to the UK. This kind of behavior infuriated the United States and amounted to a lack of recognition of the sovereignty of that nation.
• Great Britain had maintained a string of forts in the Midwest (then known as the Northwest Territory) on territory which had supposedly been ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris following the American Revolution. This was in violation of the territorial integrity of the United States.
• Furthermore, from these forts they had, in flagrant violation of that treaty, armed and empowered Indian tribes hostile to the United States, in order that they might attack American frontier settlements. The British dreamed of a powerful Indian buffer state, probably under leadership of Tecumseh, that would advance sufficiently to provide a counterbalance to American interests.
• Great Britain did not show any customary diplomatic courtesy to the United States, never apologizing for any of its disastrous interventions, like the Chesapeake-Leopard affair (where they fired on an American ship and killed or wounded 21 Americans).

Madison never called for a declaration of war explicitly, but his statements to Congress made it utterly obvious that he was pro-war.

Relative strengths

Although the US was considerably stronger in 1812 than it was in 1775, it was probably weaker relative to Great Britain, which had grown much more rapidly. America's chances of achieving all its war aims were at least as fanciful as the Confederacy achieving lasting independence, or of American force of arms securing the freedom of South Vietnam and getting a lasting peace. The USA in 1812 suffered from enormous disadvantages compared to Britain.

1. The United States had no allies whatsoever, whereas in the Revolution it enjoyed the full assistance of France, and indirect assistance by the Netherlands and Spain, which fought against the British for their own benefit. The British counted upon a much greater degree of Indian cooperation in this war than in previous North American wars.
2. The Industrial Revolution started decades earlier in Britain than in the United States. By 1812, the Royal Navy consisted of nearly one thousand ships, while US government-owned seagoing vessels (though well-constructed and brand-new) numbered 20 total, with no ships-of-the-line. British siege weapons and naval tactics were unquestionably the world's most advanced.
3. The British Army and Royal Navy were battle-hardened from years of war with Napoleon, and the general quality of their men was higher due to this experience.
4. As in the Revolution, the US had no preparations whatsoever for war. It had a standing army of perhaps 7,000 men. That many men could have been lost by the British in a single one-day battle with Napoleon.
5. Canada, Great Britain's remaining colony in North America, was much more united and less disorganized than the Americans reckoned. Consequently, the US invasion of Canada, which Madison predicted would be "merely a matter of marching," was a costly failure.
6. The general body of New Englanders, most Federalists, were opposed to the declaration of war. Although many of them stood behind their country patriotically, and most of the rest kept their mouths shut, some of them traded illegally with the British. The faction of "blue light Federalists" were rumored to shine blue lights from darkened harbors at night to alert British blockade ships about the presence of American blockade runners. This traitorous behavior has never been physically substantiated, and no US citizen was ever prosecuted for treason by collaboration with the British.
7. Until nearly the end of the war, the Americans had no personality to inspire them as General Washington had in 1775-1783. President James Madison was timid and disappointingly short in stature; when he commanded troops personally in the field in front of Washington in 1814, he suffered disastrous defeat. American leadership was defined by the successful Western generals William Henry Harrison and Andrew Jackson, the latter coming into his own only in the last few weeks of the war.
8. Britain had few pressing demands from North America and their war aims largely consisted of reining in American commerce with Continental Europe. Consequently, in order to "win" they did not have to meet ambitious goals, and if the Americans gave up, the British people would accept status quo antebellum.
9. America's war aims were ambiguous. Were they fighting for honor, for conquest of Canada, or simply for the stated aims of ending impressment of their seamen and violations of their neutral right to trade? America's varying conception of victory was hopelessly high in 1812; they hoped to annex Canada and take control over all North America.

However, the Americans did enjoy some advantages in this new conflict.

1. The conflict in Europe against France meant that only perhaps 10-20% of the fighting strength of the British Army and Navy were available for the American theater. The Americans fought a tiny portion of the actual strength of the British foe. Still, even with this diversion, the British fielded 45,000 troops by war's end, with 35,000 for the Americans, and British troops individually fought better, on the whole, than American troops.
2. Because of the distraction of the European war, Britain was largely oblivious to the political situation in America. There is little evidence to suggest that New England was full of willing traitors, but some were advocating secession from the federal union, and if Britain had nurtured this rift with financial and military support, they might have been able to cripple the unity of the American people. As it happened, they fought a conventional war against the entire American people, and no such collaboration occurred.
3. The British leadership was far from inspired. Field commanders of genius such as the Duke of Wellington were never dispatched to America. Americans could count on the fighting prowess of the King's troops, but the generally good British general staff did not serve it especially well in America.
4. The American industry had advanced to a point where it could largely produce its own small arms and powder, whereas in the Revolutionary War, at least 70% of these goods were bought or donated by France. While the Americans would rarely be as well-equipped as their British adversaries, they at least had enough powder and shot to fight for as long as the war was likely to last.
5. Americans were more likely to have rifles than their British adversaries, who still mostly carried smoothbore muskets. The American Kentucky rifle was also better than the British Baker rifle. American riflemen were more experienced at hunting, and consequently extremely good marksmen who occasionally managed to change the course of battle by sniping senior officers.
6. America's military budget was paltry, but in the case of the navy, it was very prudently spent. The original six frigates were designed to be stronger and more powerful than any other frigates afloat, while they were fast enough to evade any ships of the line. In single-ship combat, the US navy often got the better of equally-rated British counterparts. USS Constitution took or sank five enemy warships and British shot would occasionally bounce off the over-engineered oak hull, giving this ship the nickname "Old Ironsides." Although the US Navy was never strong enough to defeat the British blockade, they punched substantially above their weight.
7. The American merchant marine was also surprisingly strong. Its numbers nearly doubled between 1802 and 1810, even though a nationwide embargo was supposedly in place 1807-1808. the US merchant fleet was by far the strongest and most experienced of all the neutral nations in the Napoleonic Wars. This was to prove an advantage in providing an ample supply of privateers once war came. American privateers captured 209 vessels from the British in the first four months of war and they succeeded in taking perhaps 1,300 by war's end. The emergence of a strong American maritime presence was the only compelling reason that the British had for fearing the United States at the time, since the British wanted unilateral blue-sea dominance.
8. British ambitions became much more brazen after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814. The people of the US, except for the most diehard secessionists, stood united against the British after they published their demands for a neutral Indian buffer state in the Midwest and large cessions of American territory. The Duke of Wellington did not refuse to be transferred to the American theater if called, but he bluntly stated to his superiors that "the state of your military operations, however creditable, does not entitle you to demand any [territorial concessions]."

The case for American victory

Historians have often pointed to the overall results of the War of 1812 to support a thesis that the Americans lost the war in general and only succeeded in their limited political objectives because of the presence of Napoleon occupying the lion's share of British activity. However, this common thesis is wrong for a few reasons.

1. The stated causes for British transgressions against the United States are mostly linked to the Napoleonic Wars. If not for Napoleon providing a credible threat to the UK, the UK would never have viewed the United States as an accessory threat. The actions taken by Great Britain would not have been entirely friendly to the United States, but in the absence of such provocations, there would never have been a war.
2. General defeat was not akin to comprehensive defeat. At no point was America in danger of being comprehensively defeated; every major victory of the Americans was so spectacular and so widely celebrated that it would be enshrined forever in the nation's memory. 
3. America's unity only grew as the war went on. Once some victories were achieved, there were heroes and tales of glory to motivate the body of citizens. The Federalist Party never generally condoned treason to the national government, and it was only smear efforts by their Democratic-Republican opponents that gave rise to this claim. Still, by the time they published their grievances of the Hartford Convention, the war was already over. The news of the victory at New Orleans made Federalists seem like cowards and crybabies; it resonated catastrophically for future election campaigns, since they publicly came against a war that ended very popularly at the very same moment that the greatest victories came. If any event doomed the Federalists, it was their publicly-stated opposition to the War of 1812. 

Regarding who was the "victor" of the war, US historians and authors in the subsequent period were willing victims of selective amnesia, ignoring the Burning of Washington, the failed invasion of Canada, the startling effectiveness of the British blockade, and the devastation that British armies and their Indian allies inflicted on American frontier communities. For every ten medium-sized skirmishes in which British regulars trounced American militia, there was a battle in which the British were frustrated by surprisingly effective American defenses and tactics. These are the battles which are remembered.

• Battle of Lake Erie (1813): This was the most important naval battle on the Great Lakes, and ensured American control of the northern theater. Commander Oliver Hazard Perry led a makeshift American fleet of nine vessels to match a British makeshift fleet on Lake Erie. Though the American flagship Lawrence was captured, Perry escaped in a rowboat to brig Niagara, and in the confusion he outfought the British fleet until its surrender of the two ships, one brig, two schooners, and one sloop. The immortal quote "We have met the enemy and they are ours" comes from a message to General William Henry Harrison that Perry quickly penned after the battle.
• Battle of the Thames (1813): After a long series of setbacks, the Americans under General Harrison fought and defeated the British-Indian coalition under Procter and Tecumseh. The British suffered badly and lost 600 as prisoners, while the Americans suffered a few dozen casualties. The Indians were dispersed, and Tecumseh was killed, leading the Iroquois Confederation to disintegrate. Many cite Richard Mentor Johnson or Harrison himself as the executor of Tecumseh. Along with the less-decisive Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 (which is lumped in with the War of 1812 because it was fought with the same Indians who would later join with the British after 1812), Thames cemented Harrison's reputation as a war hero and catapulted him to the presidency in 1840 when he decided to run on the Whig ticket.
• Battle of Baltimore (1814): At this point, the British had succeeded in sacking Washington, but the government had already fled. Furthermore, this force was not large enough to conquer swathes of American territory. It fell back and was evacuated; the main invasion force came at Baltimore. Here they encountered a surprisingly large American defensive force. The British land force was deprived of its excellent leader, General Robert Ross, leaving his mediocre subordinate, Colonel Arthur Brooke, to lead the attack. They made little progress and were not able to advance without artillery support from the Royal Navy. The British ships first had to enter  Baltimore Harbor, which was blocked by scuttled merchant ships and protected by the modern, well-supplied Fort McHenry. Though the fort was mercilessly bombarded with fusilades and rockets for more than 25 hours, it was held. The British withdrew, and Francis Scott Key (aboard a British vessel attempting to secure the release of Dr. Beanes, a US civilian being held prisoner) recalled the dazzling visual display of the British bombardment, and the subsequent failure to take down the enormous American flag at the fort, with America's future national anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner.
• Battle of New Orleans: (1815): Of the two major invasion plans that Great Britain executed in 1814-1815, the first was in Baltimore, and the larger second effort was in the south. General Andrew Jackson commanded perhaps 4,000 troops against nearly 11,000 British regulars who had been redeployed from Europe. Perhaps they were overconfident, but then-commander, Gen. John Keane, was unimaginative and slow in approaching the city. Jackson ordered a harrassment raid on the British camp while they slept; though both sides took equal losses, the British became overly cautious and never regained the initiative. By the time of the main battle on Jan. 8, the British attacked in their full force but they met extremely stubborn resistance and earthwork defenses by Jackson's men, many of them equipped with deadly Kentucky rifles. The Americans made no retreats that day, and pounded the advancing British so hard that few of the redcoats even made it to the front lines; seasoned veterans of the Napoleonic Wars swore they had never seen such a volume of fire. The British suffered 2,042 casualties, including a high proportion of officers and three generals, compared to Jackson's 71 casualties, of which few were officers. The invasion had gotten off to a disastrous start, and the overall commander Gen. Lambert thought it too costly to continue even with reinforcements. The Royal Navy hastily evacuated the force and news spread back through America like wildfire. Whereas the press had been publishing doom stories for weeks as 1814 drew to a close, claiming that as many as 20,000 British troops were landing in New Orleans, the new year of 1815 was soon greeted with news of an almost unbelievably lopsided victory. The Battle of New Orleans was absolutely critical in that it fulfilled the American lust for glory and honor, eliminating one of the key reasons for the war.

Humorously, Canadian historians and authors engaged in the same kind of forgetfulness, believing the war to be an unqualified success for Canada by preserving its independence against invasion from the US. Canada's victories on its own soil were definitely a testament to their fighting capacity. However, golden memories ignore the lack of unity in Canada at the time, the poor performance of Canadian troops whenever not fighting in last-ditch defense, and the dearth of success that was achieved by Canadian armies whenever not bolstered by homeland British troops. Left to its own devices, and without British officers, the Canadian militia was a rabble, and unlikely to defeat even the comparatively weak American regular army.

From an American perspective, the war was a successful defense by a young country of their principles and territory against aggression from Britain, which was the most powerful nation in the world at the time. Even if New Orleans was repeated again ten times, it is unlikely the Americans could have gotten all of their demands. This would require convincingly defeating the entire British Army, which for the United States was impossible. But this was immaterial. The Treaty of Ghent was already in force before the battle began. What American people received was news of peace, coupled with the sweet taste of victory, and nevermind that they still got no protection from the very threats that originally propelled them into warfare.

Every side that fought the War of 1812 won... except the Indians.

With Napoleon gone, and the British Empire stronger than ever, the British people had nothing to gain from continuing the war against America. Canada would be the only winner, perhaps annexing territory at the expense of the United States. Why would British soldiers risk their lives for more colonial possessions in North America, where political boundaries were mature and clearly defined, as opposed to Asia and Africa, with richer pickings and more pliable natives for little or no bloodshed?

• Why the British won: The British saved face at the very end of the war, in spite of the defeat at New Orleans, by making peace without losing any territory in Canada. They were not required to apologize or reimburse for the impressment and neutrality violations committed prior to war. They could quite rightly feel that their armies had done fairly well, winning most of the battles and managing to get a peace which did not require them to give anything up. The succeeded in burning Washington.
• Why the Canadians won: Canada's independence was preserved, and a growing sense of Canadian nationalism emerged. The French Catholics had fought alongside English-blooded Protestants in defense of a Canadian state that would respect religious freedom, because they feared that America would force Catholics to convert(a baseless assertion). Once and for all, America dropped any claims to Canadian territory.
• Why the Americans won: Every practical portion of its casus belli was moot by 1814, since Napoleonic France was defeated and the British were no longer desperately raiding the seas to persecute neutral shipping. They succeeded in burning York, a provincial capital in Canada. They won some well-regarded successes in the face of overwhelming odds, and their lucky breaks at Baltimore and New Orleans would go down in history forever. National unity developed which would carry the nation through to the Civil War. Although the Battle of New Orleans had no effect on the Treaty of Ghent, its impact on the British people was to force them to abide by the terms of the treaty and accord America some respect.
• Why, moreover, all sides won: Both sides lost important capital cities. Both sides lost proportional amounts of men and treasure, while no side lost territory, leaving nothing left for revanchists to claim. America gave up all claims to Canada at the same time in which Britain finally treated America like a proper nation. The inherent equality of these circumstances compelled the British and Americans to focus on their commonalities in future times. Both were English-speaking nations with a majority of Protestants of Anglo-Saxon stock. Though Great Britain was still a monarchy, it was by far the most liberal in Europe, and closest to the interests of the United States. The seeds of Anglo-American alliance were sowed not in 1914, but in 1814, in the Treaty of Ghent.
• Why the Indians lost: Every single retreat that the British took in the western territory exposed the weak will of their European ally. The American people had steely determination to expand west, and because of the Indian attacks on American settlements, the government was eager to extract some vengeance. Throughout the war, the Indian cause ebbed lower and lower, until they gave up all dreams of holding onto the Midwest, and evacuated further west.

Never swap horses midstream

What followed the Battle of New Orleans was probably the first case of absolute national ecstasy. It must have been comparable to V-J Day or the announcement of the effectiveness of the Salk polio vaccine on April 12, 1955. Ursuline nuns in New Orleans prayed before the battle for deliverance, and the prioress Mother Ste. Marie Olivier de Vezin made a solemn vow to offer an annual mass of Thanksgiving on that very day, for every year going forward, if the battle should be won (it was still being upheld by the nuns as of 2012).

In New England, the Hartford Convention formulated the following demands of the Federalist Party and its supporters, to be implemented by Constitutional amendments.

1. Outlawing of embargoes that would last more than 60 days.
2. Requirement of a 3/5 majority for declaration of an "offensive war" (which they believed the War of 1812 was), for admission of a new state, or interdiction of foreign commerce.
3. Removal of "three-fifths compromise" in the Constitution, which treated each slave as "3/5 of a person" so as to increase the representation of slaveholding states in the Congress, even though slaves could not vote and had no rights.
4. One-term limitation on future U.S. Presidents.
5. Each President elected must be from a different state than his predecessor. 

Even if the news from New Orleans was disastrous, it's fanciful to think that the Federalists would have garnered some sympathy for their proposals. Even in peacetime, each proposal would be a hard fight through Congress, and then would have to be submitted to the states for ratification, which was utterly impossible to meet with success.

What are the probable results of a national candidate or national party gaining the reputation of being anti-war at a dangerous crossroads in history?

• 1816: After opposing the War of 1812 and with rumors of planned secession, the Federalist Party lost all mainstream support outside of New England. They found a surprisingly good candidate in Rufus King, but even if George Washington himself came back from the dead to run on the Federalist ticket they would still have lost. The Federalist Party collapsed between 1816-1820, and for a brief period the old party designations lost meaning, since everyone elected to the Congress was a Democratic-Republican. 
• 1864: The Democrats ran on a platform that was mildly anti-war, but its candidate George B. McClellan was personally pro-war. He had some personal popularity, but basically opposed Lincoln on petty issues, and lost. Lincoln did not technically run on the Republican ticket in 1864; it was temporarily renamed the "Union Party" to appeal to Democrats that supported the war.
• 1900: The Democrats ran William Jennings Bryan, who had been extremely supportive of the Spanish-American War, but in the postwar aftermath had opposed the annexation of the Philippines and claimed that the Americans were engaging in imperialism. This was just enough rope for the Republicans to hang him, and McKinley won re-election convincingly on his war record, with the public acknowledging that there were still hostilities in the Philippines.
• 1940: For the first time in several elections, the economy was not the largest issue, although much campaigning was still done in support of, or opposition to, the New Deal. After the Republicans waffled about whether to adopt a pro-war or isolationist stance to WWII, they decided to attack Roosevelt for being unprepared for war. It backfired, since FDR preempted all realistic accusations by massive military buildup in 1940, running most strongly on his experience in foreign policy and his ability to keep the nation out of war or win it if they end up caught in it. FDR easily secured re-election. In 1944, the war was going so well for the United States that Dewey didn't stand a chance.
• 1968: In a very close, hard-fought election, Republican Richard Nixon (winner in 1960) won over Hubert Humphrey despite the dominance of the Democratic Party at the time. In 1964 LBJ had creamed Barry Goldwater and the Republicans looked like extremists; now in 1968 the Democratic National Convention seemed to be overrun by pacifist anti-government elements that tainted the entire party with defeatism. Although the Vietnam War was not going well, the public trusted Nixon's hardline anti-communism to end the war successfully.
• 1988: The Cold War is still a big campaign issue. With Reagan's military buildup of the 1980s directly contributing to the weakness of the Soviet Union in the last period of the decade, Bush the Elder ran on the same tough stance, and lampooned his opponent Michael Dukakis for weakness on military matters, especially for his comical photo-op appearance while driving an M1 Abrams tank.
• 2004: Although it is already clear that the Iraq War did not go as smoothly as planned, Bush the Younger is given a second term primarily because his opponent John Kerry ran on an anti-war platform. Bush's bipartisan popularity erodes anew in his second term, but he maintains approval of most Republicans until 2008. In the final year of his term, Bush's handling of the economic crisis is lampooned. Americans do not widely support his domestic policies, and by the end of his second term he will be extremely unpopular. As of 2012, Bush has been under the radar for several years and his reputation still has undergone very little, if any, improvement. He might be compared to Herbert Hoover in how reviled he was in his own time; the 2008 election featuring John McCain reminded some observers of the 1936 election in which FDR ran against not the Republican candidate directly, but against the ghost of Hoover's supposedly-failed policies.

 The American people have historically been reluctant to cause war, but they take the prosecution of war very seriously. In American history, if the President starts to fight a war, the American people almost always give him two terms to do it. Never in American history has an anti-war party or candidate triumphed in the midst of a major war or shortly thereafter. Sometimes the danger is not actually real, as Humphrey would probably have done exactly what Nixon did, and Vietnam fell to communism anyway. 

This phenomenon is usually given as an old-timey adage: Never swap horses midstream. The meaning of this is that the American people will always support a wartime president if they feel the war is actually truly dangerous to America's existence or freedom, in the interest merely of preserving unity and letting the war run to a consistent, victorious conclusion. This support especially applies if there is any whiff of the opposition party opposing or undermining the war effort. The Federalists were the first party to become associated with defeatism, although not really the last. The later Democrats would have to atone for their sordid behavior during the Civil War by losing almost every presidential election of the second half of the 19th century. When FDR mobilized traditional Democratic strengths (progressive policies and job creation schemes) while subsuming contemporary Republican strengths (industrial growth and success in war), he made the Democratic Party dominant for decades to follow. Even the personal unpopularity of George W. Bush and certain of his Cabinet couldn't unseat him in 2004 when the Democrat platform began to stink of defeatism.

The Era of Good Feelings

James Monroe was the last of the U.S. Presidents who was a Founding Father. He had fought in the Revolutionary War, and he was an anti-Federalist that opposed ratification of the Constitution for Virginia. This made him a good candidate to curry the outrage of the American people against any Federalist doctrines after the War of 1812. There was a minor row against Virginia, since 3 of the previous 4 presidents (Washington, Jefferson, and Madison) had come from Virginia, and Monroe was again a Virginian; some Americans feared a dynasty would emerge that would dominate the Presidency. However, no other candidate would have been as popular as Monroe, and he would indeed be the last President to ever hail from Virginia. The Hartford Convention's plan to prevent a single state from dominating the Presidency became superfluous after Monroe.

Monroe had the immense fortune to live in a time in which partisan politics were almost nonexistent. He had the luxury of appointing his preferred candidates from either party to whatever office he chose. The Federalist Party dissolved, and consequently the Democratic-Republican Party stopped convening its caucus, and also ceased to be organized at a national level. Politics both in New England and the rest of the nation dissolved into localized issues. In 1820, the Democratic-Republican Party took the formality of re-nominating Monroe for a second term, and the Federalists had ceased to exist at the national level.

Monroe then embarked on an extraordinary "Great Goodwill Tour" of the entire country in 1817 and 1819. He dressed in the then-fading 18th-century fashion, continuing to wear a powdered wig and donning a Revolutionary War-era uniform. When he visited New England, the stronghold of Federalism, he maintained his characteristic courtesy, dignity, and charm. Historians will record that this was an opportunity for the Federalists to disavow secession and reassert their loyalty to the American state, and they did so. Madison was warmly received as a legitimate president, not as a victorious enemy.

The Panic of 1819 was the first major financial crisis to hit America. It was quite serious, with mass unemployment affecting whole American cities for the first time. In Philadelphia, for example, an estimated 75% of the population was out of work. The expansionary monetary policy of the wartime government was likely to blame, and Monroe was influenced by the financial theory of the time, which viewed such panics as inevitable. He refused to make any substantive steps to combat the crisis, like modifying the tariff, restricting credit, expanding the money supply, or public works. Monroe was convinced that the federal government could not fix the problem by activism. To his merit, the crisis worked itself out completely by 1823, and the hands-off approach was vindicated in its era. Unfortunately, it was never applied consistently ever again. As further panics and depressions eventually came in 1837, 1873, 1893, and finally 1929, the government took increasingly radical steps to contain the problem, and yet each depression was worse than the one which preceded it. The Great Depression of the 1930s was by far the longest and yet by far the most laboriously-counterattacked by the federal government. As of this writing, the bailout and money supply wizardry tactics of the federal government are still ongoing and the recession of this era has probably still not hit bottom. You may read the above few sentences as my own personal bias, but for me Monroe gets the nod as the most ideologically pure handler of a financial crisis in US history.

The only noteworthy controversy during the Monroe presidency was the expansion of slavery. For the first time, there existed some semblance of anti-slavery politicking in the North, and it opposed the admission of any new states from the Louisiana Purchase as slave states. The slaveholding states in Congress opposed any restriction on slavery's expansion. Contrarily, it must be said, in 1820 as compared to 1850 or 1860, there was much less fierce defense of slavery in the South, and there was much less sympathy for slaves and abolitionism in North. Compromise was possible.

The Missouri Compromise passed the buck onward by admitting Missouri as a slave state while admitting Maine as a free state, keeping the balance. Looking toward the future, it seemed to satisfy both parties by dividing the western territories of the United States into free state territory north of the parallel, and slave territory south of it. Happily for Monroe, this agreement took place before the 1820 election, and with no substantive problem that could be levied against his administration, he ran unopposed and received a near-unanimous re-election.

Monroe was not an activist president who left his mark on the office. He was a peacemaker and a consensus-builder. He did not see himself as a leader of the Democratic-Republican Party, but of the entire nation. Consequently, he staffed his administration with everyone who was ambitious and capable, many of whom were the leading antebellum politicians: John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, and John C. Calhoun. The first three would later squabble for the presidency immediately after Monroe left office, and  Calhoun would later come to be a dominant pro-slavery figure in the Senate, rivaling Henry Clay (who also ran for president in 1824) and Daniel Webster (who opposed slavery). In no case was national political unity maintained after 1824. However, Monroe did leave behind a reasonably strong economy, an extraordinary dignity to the Presidency, and a framework for effective regional compromise that would last for decades.

Monroe Doctrine- Everlasting triumph of British foreign policy

The Era of Good Feelings was still present in 1823, by which time almost every French, Spanish and Portuguese colony in South and Central America successfully declared independence and formed republics. They were able to do so with little bloodshed because all European nations were busy with the Napoleonic Wars in Europe.

The new states were all recognized by the USA, which welcomed the presence of an entire hemisphere dedicated to democracy. The Americans feared the return of former colonial overlords to reclaim the now-independent states of the Western Hemisphere. Another difficult question was on the Pacific Coast of North America, where Russia was expanding its claims and America was eager to rein in their ambitions.  However, any kind of pledge by the United States to protect the sovereignty of the Americas was not backed by sufficient force.

There was now another option, unthinkable just ten years earlier: cooperation with the British. Following the successful conclusion of the War of 1812, the long-term repercussion of the now-thawed state of British-American relations was cooperation on the high seas. The British had not lost any territory in North America in the last war, and never had any in South America to begin with. They also considered it desirable to prevent the Spanish, French, and Portuguese from reconquering the profitable land in the Western Hemisphere, because that would have the consequence of disallowing British merchants to trade freely with those lands. Free trade benefited the British most of all nations, because of their massive merchant fleet.

The history books rarely make mention of the fact that the "Monroe Doctrine" was basically a British idea that was passed over to the Americans who convinced themselves that it was their own idea. The British Foreign Minister George Canning proposed to President Monroe that a joint declaration of the independence and territorial integrity of the New World be made by the United States and Great Britain. Canning must have known that Monroe couldn't possibly accept such terms so shortly after a war between the countries, particularly because this statement would have humiliated the United States by emphasizing its weakness.

On one side, an outright alliance with the British would have been silly and one-sided; a naval alliance was derided by Secretary of State Adams as "[...] undignified, like a tiny American cockboat sailing in the wake of a British man-of-war." Thus it was critical that the American people understood the plan to be purely American, and not implying anything about the power of the USA to enforce security of the Western Hemisphere. If any specific statements were made about America's commitment to defend other republics, it would have exposed the Americans as spineless and weak during a period that they lacked the strength to keep any European nation (even Russia or Portugal) out of the Americas.

On the other side, whatever statement the Americans made on behalf of the new nations of South America would be beneficial to its relations with those countries, and would let America save face in the eyes of the world, even if it didn't have plausible power to back it up. Americans must have also realized that if they made such a guarantee unilaterally, that it would meet with tacit British approval, and there would be irregular cooperation to enforce it between the navies, so the practical effect would be similar.

The end result was the Monroe Doctrine, actually devised by Adams, which was a very stuffy and boring legal-ese document.  Simplified, it basically asserts that any attempts by colonial powers to conquer new lands or to challenge the territory or independence of existing republics, within the entire Western Hemisphere, would be opposed by the United States. Management and control of existing colonies was allowed (such as Canada). The Monroe Doctrine did not make any mention of Great Britain and it surely did not hint of alliance. It also gave no concrete commitments by the United States, and acted merely as an idealized theory for a then-unenforceable policy.

However, the British actually acted most strongly in defense of the Monroe Doctrine, so its practical effect was just the same as a bilateral agreement between the UK and US. The independence of the South American states was overwhelmingly protected by the Royal Navy, not by the fledgling US Navy.

Ironically, the vagueness of the Monroe Doctrine has allowed it to be used elastically throughout the ensuing years. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, Secretary of State Seward loudly threatened to send nearly 1 million war-tempered bayonets of the Union Army into Mexico to expel the French-appointed Emperor Maximilian; the French immediately disavowed their puppet and he was ingloriously executed by the Mexican people. By 1900, the USA was the world's strongest economic power, and although its military was relatively weak by European standards, it had the clout to add the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, emphasizing that any intervention in independent Latin American republics for the purpose of repaying debts would be opposed by the United States.

Still, however, none of these usurpations by the United States ever came at the expense of Great Britain, and the two nations became all the closer for it. The long-term effects of this cooperation are so ponderous that it is difficult to overstate them. If there had been no Monroe Doctrine, the interests of the US and UK may have diverged in a different direction, leading to war. It would never have been demonstrated how preferable it was to cooperate in the international scene. The fundamentally overlapping interests of these two nations was shown when both nations benefited by upholding the Monroe Doctrine. Without this crucial period, the United States may never have worked up enough sympathy to embroil itself in WWI on the British side, and perhaps naval war would have come in 1922 instead of the Washington Naval Conference.

Unquestionably, the long-term advantages of the Monroe Doctrine for the British were profound. The United States was weak in 1823, but it would be the world's most powerful nation just 80 years later. Cooperation with the Monroe Doctrine made Britain seem inherently more noble and trustworthy than other European monarchies, and not only made war between the two nations less probable, but also smoothed the transition of power. All previous world super-empires, such as Rome, Ming China, the Mongol Empire, and others had not faded gracefully, but disintegrated ingloriously. The British Empire did slowly fade away, but the United States financed the salvation of the homeland of the UK in two world wars and aided in its defense on a massive scale. To this day, the United Kingdom still enjoys cordial relations with most of its former colonies (including and especially the United States) and is still one of the world's most powerful and developed nations. Not too bad for them. I'd put the Monroe Doctrine at #1 on the list of the best British foreign policy decisions of all time. (We can only hope that the transition from the US to China, if it happens, is so mutualistic.)