4.3 & 4.4: Politics, Regional Interests, and The World Stage
4.3: Explain how different regional interests affected debates about the role of the federal government in the early republic.
4.4: Explain how and why American foreign policy developed and expanded over time.
In the last set of notes, we went over the rise of political parties and Jefferson and now, we’re going to be going more in-depth about politics, regional interests, and the world stage.
Henry Clay’s American System
So one of the main things we’re going to be talking about is how regional interests differ in the United States. Remember that the War of 1812 was heavily supported by the Democratic-Republicans while the Federalists opposed this and even threatened secession. But while the U.S. did win this war and it led to the fall of the Federalists, it showed that the U.S. lacked a way to be economically self-sufficient from Europe and that the country had poor infrastructure. So Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed his American System to fix these problems. In his American System, he proposed three key things.
Federally funded internal improvements like roads and canals
Federal tariffs to protect U.S. manufacturers
The creation of the Second Bank of the United States
Unfortunately for him though, Presidents James Madison and James Monroe both objected to internal improvements because of regional interests and because they saw this as an overreach of federal power. But despite this, by 1816, the other two policies were put into place.
Missouri
As Americans continued to expand westward and settle in new territories, the topic of how slavery would be handled in new states would lead to many regional tensions. One big example of this was when Missouri applied for statehood in 1819. With thousands of slaves already in the territory, many expected Missouri to become a slave state. However, it was incredibly important for both the North and South to keep a balance of free and slave states in the Senate. For the South, they needed an equal number of free and slave states so they could block any anti-South or anti-slave legislation. With eleven free and eleven slave states already present, Missouri’s entry as either a free or slave state would ruin the balance.
In the proposed Tallmadge Amendment, senators proposed that all slaves in Missouri would be emancipated (set free) after turning 25. This was viewed as a threat to slavery by the South and they threatened to secede from the country. These debates were finally resolved by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, proposed by Henry Clay. This compromise allowed for Missouri to join the Union as a slave state, but a new free state, Maine, would be created to keep the balance. The compromise also established the 36° 30’ line as the boundary for determining slave and free states. Any new states north of this line would be free states, while any new states south of it would be slave states.
Tecumseh’s War
During this period, many Americans wanted to take the land of Native Americans and settle it. In 1809, the Treaty of Fort Wayne obtained almost thirty million acres of land from the natives for the settlement of Illinois and Indiana. However, this eventually led to Tecumseh’s War between the Shawnee people (led by their leader, Tecumseh) and William Henry Harrison, the first governor of Indiana, climaxing in the Battle of Tippecanoe in which Harrison’s army won. This would later cause Harrison to be elected as the 9th president of the United States in 1840.
The Monroe Doctrine
After removing Spain from Florida, the United States sought to remove more Europeans from the Western Hemisphere. By 1822, many Latin American countries such as Columbia, Mexico, and Argentina had freed themselves from colonial rule. This led to Monroe establishing the Monroe Doctrine in 1823 which had three key points:
America would not get involved in European wars unless directly impacted
European nations were not welcome in the West and were not allowed to make any new colonies or take back former colonies in the Americas
Anything that happened in the Americas was the responsibility of the U.S. and therefore, any attempt at European influence in the Americas would be considered an “unfriendly act”
By the late 1820s, the U.S. began establishing trade connections and trading with other parts of the world such as Mexico and China. American merchant ships transported merchandise across the Pacific to trade for porcelain and silk from Asia. This trade would then lead to a growing interest in taking over islands in the Pacific, and also caused a surge in demand and a transformation in manufacturing called the Market Revolution.
Aftermath of War of 1812
After the War of 1812 was over, the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 still left borders with Canada unclear. After James Monroe became the fifth president in 1817, he negotiated a U.S.-Canadian border along the 49th parallel and a ten-year joint U.S.-British occupation of the disputed Oregon Territory. Meanwhile, Spain was having difficulty governing Spanish Florida due to rebellions in their Latin American colonies. This allowed many natives, slaves, and other people in Spanish Florida to cross the border into the U.S.
As a result, General Andrew Jackson was sent to Florida by Monroe in 1817 to stop this. This led to the First Seminole War, ending in 1818 with Spain selling the Florida territory to the U.S.
Later, in 1819, the Adams-Onis Treaty was negotiated by John Quincy Adams to officially define the border between the U.S. and Spain’s territories to the west.
