Era of Good Feelings - Post-war Nationalism and Developments

Post-war Nationalism and Developments

The Era of Good Feelings started in 1815 in the mood of victory that swept the nation at the end of the War of 1812. Exaltation replaced the bitter political divisions between Federalists and Republicans, the North and South, and the East coast cities and settlers on the western frontier. The political hostilities declined because the Federalist Party had largely dissolved after the fiasco of the Hartford Convention in 1814-15. As a party, Federalists "had collapsed as a national political force." The Democratic-Republican Party was nominally dominant, but in practice it was inactive at the national level and in most states.

The era saw a nationalizing trend that envisioned “a permanent federal role in the crucial arena of national development and national prosperity.” Monroe’s predecessor, President James Madison, and the Republican Party, had come to appreciate – through the crucible of war – the expediency of Federalist institutions and projects, and prepared to legislate them under the auspices of John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay’s American System.

This shift in policy was announced in Madison's Seventh Annual Message to Congress in December 1815. In April 1816, he subsequently authorized measures for a national bank and a protective tariff on manufactures. One of the clearest recommendations of his December message however, to initiate a program to support internal improvements, would not pass first muster; on his last day in office, March 3, 1817, President Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill of 1817, which earmarked the bank's creation "bonus" as a fund for internal improvements. Madison felt that congress had no constitutional power to expend the public revenues for any such purpose, and he was appalled at the logrolling and pork barrel spending that accompanied the Bonus Bill debates.

The emergence of “new Republicans” – undismayed by mild nationalist policies – anticipated Monroe’s “era of good feelings” and a general mood of optimism emerged with hopes for political reconciliation. Monroe’s landslide victory against Federalist Rufus King in 1816 was so widely predicted that voter turnout was low. A spirit of reconciliation between Republicans and Federalists was well underway when Monroe assumed office in March 1817.

In his first annual message President Monroe, admitting the great advantage to be derived from a good system of roads and canals, but declared it to be his settled conviction that congress did not possess the right to construct it. This initially slowed improvements legislation early in his administration, but the first salvo arrived on March 14, 1818, when the House passed a resolution, declaring that congress did have the power to appropriate money for constructing roads and canals, and for the improvement of watercourses. A bill was then developed to fund and collect tolls on the Cumberland Road, including establishing turnpike gates, tolls, and penalties for their infringement. On May 4, 1822 Monroe vetoed the bill because of these attempts to assert federal jurisdiction in a state locality. Noted in the veto message and in an unprecedented step, Monroe also used the occasion to present a report titled Views of the President of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements. Within this critical document, Monroe made clear that while the Constitution did not empower Congress to establish any “system” of internal improvements, he stated “To the appropriation of the public money to improvements, . . . I do not see any well-founded constitutional objection.”... With that statement, Monroe now held that congress had the power to appropriate the public moneys at its discretion; and that though it was in duty bound to select objects of general importance, it was not the province of the president to sit in judgment upon its selections. The strife over internal improvements finally came to hinge on the simple question of whether or not a certain sum of money should be voted by Congress for such use; the long running discussion of the constitutional point was thus avoided.

Internal improvements legislation soon followed; on March 3, 1823, a clause in a lighthouse bill appropriated $6,150 for the improvement of harbors, in April 1824, the General Survey Act was passed, appropriating $30,000 for preliminary surveys, by the Corps of Engineers, with the expectation being that widespread regions would be surveyed, and the most promising improvements would be undertaken and finished first. On March 3, 1825, an act was passed by which the United States subscribed $300,000 to the stock of the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.