PART 3: THE TRIUMPH OF THE FRONTIER
V: NO DISSOLUTION, BUT DISILLUSION: THE WAR OF 1812 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Undeserved Dominance: the rise of the Democrat-Republican Party.
In the aftermath of the Battle of New Orleans and the Treaty of Ghent which had sealed the War of 1812, it was time for reflection and introspection. Americans, ever the polemicists, came to differing conclusions. They all can be summarized thus:
The resilience and integrity of the American Republic was proven in the face of external blows by the old foe, the British Empire.
Ultimately it was the Constitutionally created Federal Government n conjunction with the States which have won the day. The National Government could not be dismembered nor did the States waver and attempt to severe their ties to it even in the face of the enemy.
Despite the political robustness of the United States, the Federal Government has been woefully unprepared militarily and financially for either a defensive or offensive war.
We, who enjoy the benefit of hindsight, historical perspective, and dimmed emotional attachments to the events and personalities of the Era, can appreciate that those conclusions are not contradictory. As a matter of fact it vindicated the entire platform of an existing party.
By all rights, the Federalist Party should have achieved dominance in the period immediately following the Peace of Ghent. Not only did the Democrat-Republicans embarrass themselves by their mismanagement of the War under the Madison Administration, their ideological failings were laid bare.
Gunboat fleets maintained by the various States, militia companies commanded by political appointees, a financial system reliant on State-chartered banks and lacks a central lender of last resort to the government. All these structures of American Military, Naval and Financial power were wrought by the Democratic-Republican administrations of Jefferson and Madison, dismantling the works of the Federalists Washington and Adams presidencies. In a fight against the expertly trained and equipped and superbly financed armies and navies of the British Empire, America was almost brought to its knees.
But the Democrat-Republicans had the political skill to navigate the shoals and tempests of a now democratic republic that the Aristocratic Federalists lacked.
The Federalists greatest blunder was the Hartford convention, of course, but the Democrat-Republicans could rely on the Electorate to remember to the Administration its bravery during the War and forget its failures. In the elections of 1816, Secretary of State James Monroe, the Democratic-Republican candidate had won by a landslide, winning 184 electoral votes cast by 16 states to Sen. Rufus King (F-NY) 34 from 3 states. Compare this to the previous Presidential struggle, in which James Madison had secured a second term by 128 electoral votes to Lieutenant Governor DeWitt Clinton's (F-NY) 89, representing an 11-7 states margin and an electorate almost split in the middle, and you shall understand how low did the Federalists' star had sunk during the War.
American legislation, fostering American industry - Henry Clay and the American System
We have already met the Great Compromiser in our previous post, seeing him hammering out the Missouri Compromise of 1820 together with Monroe's erstwhile Federalist rival, Rufus King.
This Republican of Kentucky, voted to the Speaker's chair immediately upon his entrance to the House in 1811, had voted the party line on the First Bank of the United States, contributing to the majority which had let America's first National Bank's Charter to lapse. However, seeing the American economy and treasury buckling under the pressure of war with Britain, he would become an ardent supporter of the Second Bank of the United States and had introduced - together with then fellow Republican-nationalist John C. Calhoun - the bill to establish its charter in 1816.
The Second Bank was a part of a greater scheme which Henry Clay had devised and would attempt, for the rest of his political lives, to bring into fruition, which partially reflected the legislative priorities of the Monroe Administration, known as The American System.
Partially inspired by the name (if not by the content) of Napoleon's failed Continental System, the American System had the whiff of the old Francophilia of the pre-Monroe Republicans, but this time, blessed with Clay's insightful and critical mind and his ability to understand all that was wrong with the Emperor's Berlin Decree of 1806.
The Napoleonic system was borne not out of genuine concern for the peoples of Europe nor out of understanding of their united interests and sentiments, which, despite the glittering French bayonets in the streets of Berlin and Vienna, did not exist. It was a punitive counter-measure to the British blockade on the French Empire. It built no institutions, no roads, canals or bridges, banks and exchanges to tie the European nations together.
The Decree was no more than a wartime measure that was expected to disappear the moment the British come to their senses and the negotiating table.
At any rate, it was meant to empower only one country within the System - namely France herself. It was a little more than a petty gesture coupled with license to loot neutral vessels trading with England (and, as per the Bayonne Decree of 1808 and the Rambouillet Decree of 1810, all American vessels as well. This had not bothered the Jefferson Administration, which passed the Non-Importation Act in 1807). The system was fit to the rapacious Emperor of the French, not the great American Republic.
The American System would not attempt something as foolhardy as the cutting off of America from the world markets.
On the contrary, it would use tariffs from foreign imports to finance Federal projects such as canals, bridges and roads- Internal Improvements, as they were termed, which would weave the American West to the East Coast in a single, productive market which would be able to best exploit the vast resources of the Frontier in a rich and powerful industry, capable of competing with that of Britain or France.
Over the entire thing would preside the Second Bank of the United States making sure bank notes are not printed irresponsibly or excessively, guaranteeing a sounds and widely available paper currency to facilitate transactions and investment.
Obviously the System would have benefited the West, especially Clay's home state of Kentucky, which had suffered a recession due to the shift in traffic westward from land routes across the Appalachians to river navigation over the Mississippi.
The prominence of Western statesmen and interests in American politics would become the main feature of 19th Century American politics. Clay was an asset to every coalition not only due to his political acumen and rhetoric brilliance, but also due to his bona fides as a fervent advocate of the West. His greatest rival would have similar accolades and represent the opposite tendencies and lesson learned among Western Democrat-Republicans.
Old Hickory Goes to War - The Rise of Jacksonianism
But the lesson of internal and systemic improvements was universal. Many Democrat-Republicans had learned a quite a different one: That the British were still hostile to American independence and domination of North America. That internally, the banks and Federal bureaucracy had proven unreliable and that secret factions would not hesitate betraying the United States in her time of peril.
The champion of these opinions had been Andrew Jackson. A Tennessee lawyer rising to military command over the Tennessee militia (whose officers were free to elect their own "Major General"), he led an army of volunteers in the early stages of the War (violating, on one occasion, the expressed command of the Secretary of War of the United States) in the campaign known as The Creek War. After his success on that front, he was appointed a Major General in the United States Army. In this command, he had decisively won the final battle of the war, the battle of New Orleans.
Jackson have had no objections to "internal improvements in and of by themselves, nor did he oppose the professionalization of the armed forces.
The issue that had spur him in his national career (to which his victory in New Orleans and in the subsequent Seminole War in Florida had catapulted him) was constitutional rather than practical.
Jackson, by no means answers the stereotype his enemies as a man more accustomed to issue orders in the style of a general rather than compromise in a manner of a democratic public servant.
On the contrary, General Jackson had risen only due to the political success of United States Representative Jackson, Senator Jackson and that of Judge Jackson, and, taken as part of Jackson whole career, he had returned to legislative office soon hereafter, returning to the Senate before his first attempt at the Presidency. Clearly, Jackson was not a mere "Military Chieftain" as he was dubbed by his arch-rival, Henry Clay, but a man who served and knew well all three branches of American Government.
Indeed, Jackson was a great admirer of the system he knew and understood well. For him, the Constitution was the only American System that was needed or could exist. More than anything he was afraid that a parallel structure to that of the Constitutional, directly or indirectly elected institutions of Congress, the Presidency and the Judiciary, would spring forth from some grand project of the Federal Government, reducing them to no more than rubber stamps and figureheads.
The People, reasoned Jackson, have, through their votes, some control over the President, the Congress, even over the Judiciary and cabinet secretaries, since those had to be confirmed by the Senate in their positions and could be removed by the impeachment process.
Thus, popular sovereignty had been enshrined in the Constitution. However, he argued, the People's Sovereignty is weakened by the introduction of institutions, such as the Bank of the United States, who wield immense power without being answerable to the People or their representative and without ever being elected by the people. Such an institution, if allowed to survived, would eventually gain the ability to bully the legitimate government and effectively replace it.
The Jacksonian remedy was to dismiss every civil servant within the Executive Branch which was left over from previous administrations and fill their positions with appointees loyal directly to the President, to which they owed their positions.
Institutions which the President or Congress could not dismiss or appoint their functionaries at will, such as the Bank, were to be abolished.
This have created the infamous "Spoils System", by which every incoming President was expected to remunerate those who helped him reach the Executive Mansion, by granting them public offices to which they were often unqualified.
Political appointments were nothing new, of course, but where formerly new presidents would have been swamped by office seekers after the election, offering their services for vacant posts, now such arrangements could be made in advance, the entire government divvied-up like a fresh piece of a recently acquired Western prairie land.
To Jackson, there was nothing wrong with the Spoils System. If it bred corruption, he reasoned, the corrupt would not stay in office beyond the term of the President who appointed them, and the thing gained - direct loyalty of the entire government to the President - was a sufficient boon to counterbalance the evil introduced by it.
The West against Itself - the Conflicting Ethos of the West and the Clay-Jackson Struggle.
the West was settled by the cooperation and formation of communities, crystalizing and reaching back to reconnect with the Anglo-American East.
This fact is at the core of both Jacksonianism (especially the Spoils System) and Clay's American System.
In the West, Democracy was a working, creative and vital system.
Through cooperation and connection, individuals managed to tame the wilderness, to build towns, watermills, roads and canals, to improve their land and trade their goods and services with each other.
When we consider things from this angle, Clay's American System seems like the logical conclusion of the West's way of life and settlement.
Surely, if the small democracy of Marietta, Ohio, can band together to raise fort, build a functioning town and lay down serviceable roads between it and other neighboring small societies, surely the great and mighty Government of the United States (which in the West's imagination, had become ever more glorious and mighty) can replicate the same success? surely the American People could reach to each other, pool their resources and build a truly great country together?
Western settlement, which was undertaken by small, voluntary groups, was the harshest most uncompromising form of Democracy.
A man (and in many cases, a woman) proved himself to his peers by his demonstrable abilities and his power of persuasion - not merely by words but also by his deeds and works. There was not much weight to claims of status and authority unsupported by results. Men of education and learning were prized because they had an expertise which was essential to the community and was demonstrable (due to genuine superiority of American universities). A Doctor who could treat patients competently was prized. A preacher who could bring his congregants closer to God (or make them believe so) was respected. A teacher that could teach well thrived. A lawyer who could argue well and settle disputes could even climb to high office, as Clay and Jackson both knew all too well.
From this point of view, Jackson's disdain for the supposed expertise and experience of established civil servants seems more understandable.
Jackson did not have high opinion on the achievements of previous administrations. Didn't this self-important scrivener mishandled, mismanaged and misused every resource, opportunity and victory during the War of 1812? haven't they push him to the ends of his endurance during the Seminole Wars? no, he himself , who had proven his abilities to the American People by word and deed and was rewarded therefore with the Presidency, be the judge of his underlings' abilities and value!
While Jackson did not oppose Clay's Internal Improvements per se, this way of thinking would have hindered it considerably.
Departments manned by officials who earn their positions for the duration of a single presidency by demonstrating their loyalty rather then competence cannot handle long term, continent-spanning projects with confidence. Let it be so, answered the Jacksonians. Better be a democracy with inferior road than an aristocracy with superior ones.
But Clay did not envision aristocracy of pencil-pushers as being the greatest danger facing the Republic, but monarchy.
To his taste, while the Constitution of the United States designated the President as the chief and sole Executive, it behooves such a high officer of a Republic to take counsel rather than to order, to participate rather than dominate, to reason with his secretaries and other officials rather than lay down the law. The idea of a chief executive, parceling out offices, emoluments and livings as reward for loyalty had smelled too much like an absolute monarch handing out titles and lands to favorite courtiers. "King Andrew" was a man who would turn Washington into a new Versailles, he warned, and would eventually clash with Congress.
It soon came to pass, when Congress, under the tutelage of Clay, had passed a resolution to renew the Charter of the Bank of the United States in 1832. President Jackson had vetoed the bill.
From his perch thundered Henry Clay:
Mr. President, I protest against the right of any chief magistrate to come into either House of Congress, and scrutinize the motives of its members; to examine whether a measure has been passed with promptitude or repugnance; and to pronounce upon the willingness or unwillingness with which it has been adopted or rejected.
…
Mr. President, we are about to close one of the longest and most arduous sessions of Congress under the present Constitution; and when we return among our constituents, what account of the operations of their government shall we be bound to communicate?
We shall be compelled to say, that the Supreme Court is paralyzed, and the missionaries retained in prison in contempt of its authority, and in defiance of numerous treaties and laws of the United States; that the executive, through the Secretary of Treasury, sent to Congress a tariff bill which would have destroyed numerous branches of our domestic industry, and to the final destruction of all; that the veto has been applied to the bank of the United States, our only reliance for a sound and uniform currency; that the Senate has been violently attacked for the exercise of a clear constitutional power; that the House of Representatives have been unnecessarily assailed; and that the president has promulgated a rule of action for those who have taken the oath to support the Constitution of the United States, that must, if there be practical conformity to it, introduce general nullification, and end in the absolute subversion of the government.
By rejecting the legislation, said Clay, the President appropriated to himself the proper province of Congress. By his decision to ignore the Supreme Court, that of the Judiciary. Jackson was making himself a king.
And so it came to pass that the Democrat-Republican party had finally ruptured on a permanent basis- that of two competing versions of the Western ethos, the Western interest, and between two prominent Western politicians- Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson- between the Whig and the Democratic parties.
VI: THE WEST WING: HOW THE FRONTIER IN CONTROL OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND NATIONAL POLITICS
Despite the incredible oratorical and political power of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and other early Whigs, the party was plagued from the start with disunity, poor organization and sheer bad luck.
By the election of 1840, the Whigs had dropped their perennial candidate Henry Clay in favor of Gen. William H. Harrison, which have led to great success against Democrat Martin Van Buren. Famously, Harrison died 30 days into his presidency, which have brought the unpopular John Tyler to the White House, who governed as a Democrat in all but name (Tyler would serve the Confederate Provisional Congress and in the Confederate House of Representative before his death in 1862, thus becoming the only president to betray his country).
But despite all these setbacks, the Whigs had enjoyed some success and have become one of the two dominant parties in American politics until the disastrous presidency of Millard Fillmore, the last Whig president, and like Tyler, an accidental one.
It would suffice here to say that the death of President Zachary Taylor in 1850 had caught the Whigs by surprise as they have found themselves with the unimpressive Fillmore as the standard bearer of their party. The compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state while fortifying Federal fugitive slave laws enraged and splintered Whigs, especially those who supported the nomination of Henry Clay in 1848.
The result of all this was that Fillmore did not win his party's support for a second term. The Whigs would nominate the venerable Gen. Winfield Scott in the election of 1852. Their humiliating defeat, together with the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska act would lead to mass desertion from the party, either to the newly formed Republicans or to the Democrats.
By the election of 1856, the Republican party suffer its first defeat, but the Whigs had suffered their last - Millard Fillmore, once more attempting to recapture the White House, came third place after the winner, Democrat James Buchanan of Pennsylvania and Republican John Fremont of California. The Whigs had dissolved and split themselves between the two new dominant parties. One of those former Whigs was a little known railroad lawyer from Illinois -one Abraham Lincoln.
The Twin Thunderbolts: The American-Mexican War, the Civil War and the Cementing of the American Continental Civilization
The respective histories of the two wars the United States had fought in 1846 and 1861 were told by immeasurably superior writers in great and learned books.
For the topic for our discussion it is important only that the United States had defeated an enemy that was inferior to it in organizational and industrial scope and skill, led by an oligarchy with little regard to the common people of their land, contemptuous of the martial skill of Americans and fancying themselves to be chivalrous aristocrats while treading the serfs laboring in their farmland and providing their wealth under foot.
By the grace of God, the pride of these tyrants was laid low and the war, in which they have been the aggressors, resulted in their ouster from power.
The result of these twin conflicts was not only the most obvious ones, such as the liberation of millions from servitude, but also the establishment of the United States as a Continent-wide Nation and the Federal Government as a Continental-scale government. A government which have started its life as little more than a committee of concerned citizens found itself now in possession and administration of a polity greater than the land area of the Roman Empire at its height.
Externally, it meant that the United States went in the councils of Europe from a quaint and idealistic land to which unhappy subjects may flee to a great power in its own right, one that should be accounted for when making calculations of grand strategy and diplomacy. An oversized Switzerland had proven itself an Anglophonic France.
Internally, however, wile the first war have caused the dissolution of the Whig Party, the second brought such a herd of old Whigs to power and depressed Democratic fortunes so low, that it can be said that all of Henry Clay's old dreams came true: America became a country of vast scope and power, bristling with industrious cities from Sea to shining Sea, girdled by roads, railroads and canals, all supported by Federal Expenditure.
There was a National currency, issued by the Treasury of the United States. Banking came under the preview of the Federal Government, and banks were everywhere charted by the authority of the United States, providing good, reliable source of credit to government and private enterprises large and small.
The old Frontier would be conquered and digested thoroughly in what became known as the New West. This meant that the Old West ceased to be part of the Frontier. Soon it would become better known by a new term The Midwest. That is, that part of the country which lays west to the old Eastern Seaboard, but also in the heart of the country.
This part of the country would come to dominate the politics of the late 19th century. Between 1860 and 1908, 7 Midwesterners had been elected president in 11 election seasons, often winning a second term in office.
The policy of the United States was largely focused and geared towards the interests and concerns of the Midwest.
The "imperial" conquests of the Spanish-American War was associated with the reassertion of the the East in national politics, and were the exception rather than the rule. The United States Army was utilized as policing force in the territories. The greatest concerns were the rapid industrialization and connection of western cities, not the great events of German and Italian unification, the Balkan wars, the Great Game between Russia and India or even the Scramble for Africa.
While the entirety of Europe was seized with colonization fever overseas, trying to capture as many natural resources as possible, the Americans contented themselves with a few island possessions and the opportune purchase of Alaska from the Russians, more out of concern to the sanctity of the Monroe Doctrine than out of genuine desire to exploit its mineral resources (which were unknown at the time). America was busy making sure the Midwestern farmer finds market to his produce in the Midwestern cities whose products he will purchase, not which crowned head shall rule over which lands.
While Europe was gripped in irredentist fever seeking to take apart the old European land empires and construct others in their place based on divisions of language and ethnos, America was receiving men and women of all the families of the Earth and turning them into Americans to settle its vast territories.
For many of these people, this would be the first time they would be full citizens in a free republic.
Many were liberal refugees from an increasingly oppressive Europe who have long dreamed of such good fortune and came to America after failing to realize it at home. Others, such as the wave after wave of Jews escaping Czarist tyranny, never even dreamt of such a thing being possible, and came to America escaping for little more than their lives.
The ethos all these people would be inculcated into was the version of the Western ethos that we have described prevailing in the Northwest. The newcomers were not invested in the pre-independence history of the Anglo-Americans, but they were most certainly interested in the system which made them citizens and human beings.
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