Era of Good Feelings - Failure of Amalgamation and Rise of The Old Republicans

Failure of Amalgamation and Rise of The Old Republicans

Monroe’s success in mitigating party rancor produced an appearance of political unity, with almost all Americans identifying themselves as Republicans. His nearly unanimous electoral victory for reelection in 1820 seemed to confirm this.

Recognizing the danger of intraparty rivalries, Monroe attempted to include prospective presidential candidates and top political leaders in his administration. His cabinet comprised three of the political rivals who would vie for the presidency in 1824: John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun and William H. Crawford. A fourth, Andrew Jackson, held high military appointments. Here, Monroe felt he could manage the factional disputes and arrange compromise on national politics within administration guidelines. His great disadvantage was that amalgamation deprived him of appealing to Republican “solidarity” that would have cleared the way for passage of his programs in Congress.

“From the moment that Monroe adopted as his guiding principle the maxim that he was head of a nation, not the leader of a party, he repudiated for all practical purposes the party unity” that would have served to establish his policies. The result was a loss of party discipline. Absent was the universal adherence to the precepts of Jeffersonianism: state sovereignty, strict construction and stability of Southern institutions. Old Republican critics of the new nationalism, among them John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, had warned that the abandonment of the Jeffersonian scheme of Southern preeminence would provoke a sectional conflict, North and South, that would threaten the union. Former president James Madison had cautioned Monroe that in any free government, it was natural that party identity would take shape.

The disastrous Panic of 1819 and the Supreme Court’s McCulloch v. Maryland, reanimated the disputes over the supremacy of state sovereignty and federal power; between strict construction of the US Constitution and loose construction. The Missouri Crisis in 1820 made the explosive political conflict between slave and free soil open and explicit. Only through the adroit handling of the legislation by Speaker of the House Henry Clay was a settlement reached and disunion avoided.

With the decline in political consensus, it became imperative to revive Jeffersonian principles on the basis of Southern exceptionalism. The agrarian alliance, North and South, would be revived to form Jacksonian Nationalism and the rise of the modern Democratic Party. The interlude of the Era of Good Feelings was at an end.