  The early part of the last century was an exciting time to live in America. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution, mostly old men by now, saw that their experiment in republican government had turned out to be a success. The nation was flourishing in these years like a healthy adolescent. There were growing pains, to be sure, but no one doubted now that the youngster would reach manhood. The question was: What is he going to be like? The party battles of John Adams’ administration left the Federalist Party in ruins, and Thomas Jefferson succeeded to the presidency with an overwhelming popular mandate. During his first term, Jefferson increased his popularity through buying from France the enormous Louisiana Territory which doubled the size of the United States. By the time the Lewis and Clark Expedition returned from exploring the new land, people began to realize the immense possibilities that the Louisiana Purchase held for the future of the United States. Jefferson’s second term was beset by foreign problems that culminated eventually in the War of 1812, during James Madison’s administration. Despite George Washington’s advice in his Farewell Address to stay out of entangling foreign alliances, America could not avoid being affected by events abroad. She was caught between the hammer and the anvil during Napoleon’s wars with the rest of Europe. The War of 1812 settled no issues but, soon afterward, the main Anglo-American problems left over from the Revolution were adjusted. Napoleon’s downfall at Waterloo removed France as an obstacle to American development. The period known as the “Era of Good Feeling” followed the War of 1812. During the two terms of James Monroe, internal matters were the main concern of the country: tariffs, banking, domestic improvements, the admission of new states into the Union. With the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe to respect the independence of Latin America, the United States began to emerge as a power in the world. Even more important was the appearance of storm warnings heralding the eventual coming of the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise, which drew a line between slave and free territory, established an uneasy truce between the North and the South. By the time John Quincy Adams became the sixth President, sectionalism was rapidly developing, and the balance of power between the East and the West, the industrial North and the agricultural South, was beginning to shift. The two-party system, which had largely disappeared with the collapse of the Federalists in 1800, was revived. In 1828 the long monopoly that Virginia and Massachusetts had enjoyed in supplying American Presidents came to an end with the election of Andrew Jackson of Tennessee and a new era began. The selections in this booklet reflect most of the significant events of these years from 1801 to 1829. The Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise, all are represented. In addition we have included accounts of some small events and background descriptions which give the flavor of the age. A proper notion of this period requires not only a knowledge of the major issues, such as understanding the Embargo Act or the significance of the Marbury vs. Madison decision, but also an appreciation of the quality of the experience of being an American in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Hence we have used such documents as Lorenzo Dow’s diary describing the life of a frontier preacher and Morris Birkbeck’s account of settling in Illinois. In editing the manuscripts in this booklet, we have followed the practice of modernizing punctuation, capitalization, and spelling only when necessary to make the selections clear. We have silently corrected misspelled words and typographical errors. Wherever possible we have used complete selections, but occasionally space limitations have made necessary cuts in the original documents. Such cuts are indicated by spaced periods. In general, the selections appear as the authors wrote them. Richard B. Morris James Woodress |
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