Era of Good Feelings

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The Era of Good Feelings describes the period from 1815-1824^[1] when partisan bitterness largely disappeared in United States politics. The phrase was coined by Benjamin Russell, publisher, in the Boston Newspaper Columbian Centinel on July 12, 1817, following the good-will visit to Boston of President James Monroe.

[edit] Overview

Overt political bitterness declined because the Federalists had largely dissolved and were no longer attacking the president or being attacked in return. The nation was politically united behind the Democratic-Republican Party. The Era of Good Feelings started in 1815, after the War of 1812. The Hartford Convention of 1814-15 underscored the disloyalty of the Federalists during the war. Nationalism surged after the victory of Andrew Jackson over the British at the Battle of New Orleans. President James Monroe paid little attention to party in dispensing patronage. In the election of 1820, Monroe was re-elected with all but one electoral vote, deliberately cast against him so that George Washington would remain the only unanimously elected president. Slavery had come to the forefront as a national issue, but Henry Clay's negotiation of the Missouri Compromise ameliorated the crisis. The solution was to balance admission of Missouri Territory as a slave state, with the admission of Maine as a free state. Local politics were without party labels or party conventions.

The era gave a pause to bitter debates over the protective tariff and the Second National Bank. Florida was acquired from Spain to general acclaim. President Monroe promulgated the Monroe Doctrine, advising European powers against attempts to reassert their control over former colonies in the New World. The Monroe Doctrine boldly asserted the status of the United States as a full-fledged nation, and this gained the administration popular support during a time of increased nationalism.

"...We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintain it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States...." --The Monroe Doctrine, December 2 1823, excerpt from President James Monroe's Seventh Annual Message to Congress

[edit] End

After the Panic of 1819 and the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the national mood grew more tense. However, the relentless daily bitter attacks by one party against the other did not resume until about 1828. Before 1820 the Democratic-Republican members of Congress had met in caucus and decided on the party's presidential candidate. That system collapsed in 1824 as five men competed: John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, William H. Crawford; Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson.

Calhoun took himself out of the running by deciding to seek the Vice Presidency. The other four formed regional coalitions with state politicians and pursued the electorate. At the polls, turnout was light because there were no parties to mobilize voters. Then, because no one received a majority in the electoral college, the decision on the presidency went to House of Representatives. Clay, who was Speaker of the House of Representatives, swung the election to Adams, who then appointed Clay as Secretary of State. The result outraged Jackson and his supporters. They alleged that a "corrupt bargain" had taken place and immediately began their crusade to regain the "stolen" presidency. Partisan politics began again.