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Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
Term: 1801 – 1809
Party: Democratic-Republican
Under Washington and Adams, the Federalists had established a strong government but sometimes failing to honor the principle that the American government must be responsible to the will of the people they had followed polices that alienated large groups of people. For example, they had enacted an act on houses, land and slaves affecting every property owner in the country.
Jefferson gathered behind him a great mass of small farmers, shopkeepers and other workers. In the election of 1800, Jefferson enjoyed extraordinary favor because of his appeal to American idealism. In his inaugural address, the first such speech in the new capital of Washington, D.C. (on December 1, 1801, the capital moved from Philadelphia), he promised “a wise and frugal government” to preserve order among the inhabitants but would “leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry, and improvement.” By the end of his second term, the national debt was much reduced, more humane laws for debtors and criminals were passed.
By that time, France had ceded to Spain a great tract called Louisiana - the territory west of the Mississippi River, with the port of New Orleans near its mouth. But shortly after Jefferson became president, Napoleon took possession of Louisiana. He did not want Britain to get hold of Louisiana and decided to sell it to America. In 1803, Ohio entered the Union as the 17th state and in the same year, the U.S.A. obtained the “Louisiana Purchase” for $15 million. The Louisiana Purchase would doubled the US land areathe new lands stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountainsthe area was almost the size of the original 13 colonies. The nation had gained a sweep of rich plains, high mountains, forests and river systems that would become the nation’s heartlandand one of the world’s great granaries.
As Jefferson began his second term in 1805, he declared America neutrality during the struggle between Great Britain and France. By 1807, Britain had strengthened her navy and controlled the sea lanes. Jefferson issued a proclamation ordering British warships to leave U.S. territorial waters. He decided to rely on economic pressure to force the British to back down. Congress passed the Embargo Act, forbidding all foreign commerce. In a single year, American exports fell to one-fifth of their former volume. Shipping interests were almost ruined by the measure, and discontent rose in New York and New England. Agricultural interests were suffering heavily, prices dropped as the Southern and Western farmers could not export their surplus grain, cotton meat and
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tobacco. The grumbling at home increasing, Jefferson signed the act permitting commerce with all countries but Britain or France and their dependencies.
Jefferson had a reputation of one of the best-educated people of that time. He is known to have created the American system of money –in 1785 dollar was adopted as
America’s currency. A self-taught architect, he designed the most beautiful houses in the world. He was also interested in mechanical engineering. He was a scientist, an inventor and enjoyed recreational paleontology. He is known as a botanist hobbyist and a fine musician. Jefferson’s greatest achievement as President was in expanding the area of the United States westward. In 1809, when his second term was over, he retired to his estate, but to his last days he kept in touch with public affairs through a large correspondence. He is remembered as the “Father of the Declaration of Independence.” He died on July 4, 1826, exactly fifty years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
James Madison (1751 – 1836)
Term: 1809 – 1817
Party: Democratic-Republican
James Madison is recognized as the “Father of the Constitution” and sponsor of the Bill of Rights. He is also known as guarantor of church-state separation.
In 1809, Madison succeeded Jefferson as president. Relations with Great Britain grew worse, and the two countries moved rapidly toward war: the British sailors had impressed American citizens; northwestern settlers had suffered from attacks by Indians incited allegedly by British agents in Canada. The desire to conquer Canada coupled with deep resentment over impressments of the British generated war fervor, and in 1812 the United States declared war on Britain.
The British marched from the South and in 1814 made a surprise attack on Washington. The Capitol Building was burning, the President’s residence would be next. Dolly Madison had only time to rescue her husband’s papers and a portrait of George
Washington. When the British arrived, they set fire to the President’s house. When the war was over, the house was repaired and repainted white to cover the burned places. It has remained the White House ever since.
The war had no clear winner. But the United States had shown that it could defend itself on land and sea. In 1815, the British were defeated in the Battle of New Orleans, and the peace treaty was signed.
No invaders have attacked America since 1812. The last time the USA and Britain threatened to go to war against each other was in 1895 when America vowed to “by every means resist Britain’s adventuring in the Caribbean.” Both countries calmed
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down when Britain realized it faced a bigger threat –Germany. British and American leaders saw that their peoples were better served as partners than rivals. The partnership has been a good thing for much of the rest world. The spread of English-speaking hegemony was at times ruthless and self indulgent. But America and Great Britain shared values and institutions that helped them to at once prosper and foster democracy, freedom and the rule of law. In his speech at Harvard, 1943, Winston Churchill said: “Law, language, literature – these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all a love of personal freedom… these are the common Conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples.”
Allied throughout the 20th century, the two nations fielded the most powerful militaries in the world. Britain which required its Navy to be the largest in the 19th century, bequeathed rule of the seas to America before the mid-20th century. “The Englishspeaking peoples have been seriously threatened by force,...they rarely win the first battle, writes Roberts in his book “A History of the English-Speaking Peoples”, “but they equally rarely lose the subsequent war.” They have been saved time and again.
And this is no accident: liberal democracies breed men and women who, like Churchill and Roosevelt, can possess powerful, even hubristic sense of self, yet also the humility to know the lead governments of law, not men.
Questions for Discussion
1. Which of the presidents was elected unanimously? 2. What difficulties did George
Washington face when he took office? 3. What were Washington’s strengths? 4. Why was it necessary to regulate the settling of the new frontier? 5. What international complications were the domestic difficulties compounded by? 6. Which polices caused alienation of large groups of people and why? 7. What did Jefferson’s “wise and frugal government” involve? 8. What were the assets of his policy? 9. What is the Louisiana
Purchase? 10. Why did economic pressure on Britain fail? 11. What generated war fervor? 12. Why did many Americans favor conquest of Canada? 13. When did war on Britain begin? 14. Was Washington, D.C. attacked by British? 15. When did the war end? 16. The war had no clear winner, did it? 17. How did the President’s residence get its name? 18. How was the British-American partnership born? 19. Are Americans and British rivals rather than partners at present? 20. Which of the presidents created the American system of money?
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Consider the Issue
The Founding Fathers boasted relatively impressive credentials. But would their genius hold up against standards of today’s office-seekers?
Chapter 6. Expanding the Nation
In 1816, Indiana, the 19th state, entered the Union as a nonslave state; in 1817, Mississippi, as a slave state, became the 20th state of the Union.
The mountains, plains and deserts of the Southwest had been controlled by Spain for almost 300 year, but very few Spaniards lived there; American Indian had been living there for 10,000years, but their settlements were far apart. The history of the Westward Expansion includes stories of fur trappers, explorers and pioneers. Many saw the west as a corrective to the newly urbanizing, industrializing society of the East. The West offered an opportunity for a new beginning. The phrase “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN” expressed the dream which Americans held for independence and prosperity.
Pioneers began moving westward and southwest to the Pacific Ocean. Some of the Americans went to trade, others went to settle. The different ways of dealing with the
“Indian problem” boiled down to this: The Indian had to be either assimilated or removed farther west to make room for the European civilization which the Americans felt was destined to rule the continent. And so, in 1830, the U.S. passed the Indian Removal Act. All Indians in the East would be removed to lands west of the Mississippi River. Some whites saw it a way to get more land from the Indians. Pressure for removal mounted. The peaceful Indians were removed by force from their homes and were forced to march to the land in what is now the state of Oklahoma. In all, some thousand Indians lost their lives in the course of this removal. This shameful moment in American history has come to be called “The Trail of Tears”.
Americans also wanted to settle Florida, which was a colony of Spain. In the 1800s Florida was the home of many run-away slaves from Georgia the Indians driven out of Georgia by settlers. Farmers and plantation owners wanted to stop slaves from escaping to Florida and to put an end to raids by the angry Indians. In 1818, Spanish forts were captured by the American army and brought all of eastern Florida under the control of the US. Soon Spain realized it could not defend its territory, so in 1819 it sold all of Florida to the U.S.A. for 5 million dollars, and in 1821 formally ceded Florida to the U.S.A. Since 1818 to 1845, Illinois Alabama, Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Texas entered the Union.
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TO THE PACIFIC
Texas In the early 1800s, Texas was a Mexican territory. In 18121 Mexico won its independence from Spain and Santa Fe became a Mexican city. The Mexicans allowed Americans to trade in Santa Fe. Americans were amazed by the beauty of the city and its friendly people who were cultured and educated. The new Mexican government welcomed Americans to settle in Mexico on condition that they would become Mexican citizens and obey the local laws. By the 1830s, the newcomers outnumbered the locals. The growing American population (Texans) brought a new culture, new religions and a new language with them. Mexico did not al low slavery. Many Americans were slaveowners and did not want to obey Mexican laws. In 1835, the trouble between Texans and the Mexican government turned into war resulted in Texas’ declaring its independence of Mexico (1836). Sam Houston was elected the first president of the new republic of Texas called the Lone Star Republic (their flag had only one star). In 1845, Texas joined the Union as the 28th state. There was a disagreement between the United States and Mexico over the territory in the Southwest and California. These lands were owned by Mexico. The US tried to buy the lands but Mexico refused to sell them. In 1846, President Polk asked the Congress to declare war on Mexico. The war lasted until 1848; the Mexicans fought bravely but in the end the United States won. A treaty was signed: the U.S. bought the Southwest from Mexico for 15 million dollars.
Oregon and Utah
When Lewis and Clark traveled to the Pacific coast, they went far beyond the boundary of the Louisiana Territory. At that time the Pacific Northwest was known as the Oregon Territory. Today the states of Washington, Oregon and Idaho occupy this area.
In the early 1840s, many people who had lost their jobs and decided to go to Oregon to make a new start. Wagon trains of settlers traveled from the Missouri River down the rout of more than 3,200 km long. The route was called the “Oregon Trail.” The trail went through prairies, deserts and mountains. The main struggle was that of man against wilderness. The pioneers needed courage, determination and the ability to cooperate with each other. In spring the traveling families gathered in Independence - a busy town where merchants sold supplies to the pioneers - when enough families gathered, they formed a wagon train. The pioneers hired a scout to be the leader of the wagon train and set off moving northwest. At night, the pioneers put their wagons in a circle for protection: American Indians who did not want settlers to cross their lands often attacked the wagon trains. Each year more and more pioneers came to settle in the Far West. Utah was settled in 1847 by Mormons - a religious group organized in New York. Later they moved to Ohio and than to Illinois. Mormons were treated with hostility by