=Principal Land Battles=
=1812.=--August 16, the surrender of Detroit by Hull to Brock.
October 13, defeat of Van Rensselaer by Brock at Queenstown.
=1813.=--January 18-22, the Americans were defeated at Frenchtown by
General Proctor, whose Indians massacred the wounded Americans.
April 27, York (Toronto) was captured by the Americans under General
Pike.
October 5, General Harrison forced General Proctor to retreat into
Canada, and October 5 at the battle of the Thames routed the British and
their Indian allies. Tecumseh was killed, the territory lost by Hull
regained, and Upper Canada was retained to the end of the war.
November 11, the Americans moved on Montreal, but were defeated at
Chryslers Field, and retreated.
=1814.=--July 25, Winfield Scott again invaded Canada and gained
victories at Chippewa (July 5) and at Lundy’s Lane.
August 24, capture of Washington and burning of the Capitol, the White
House, and other buildings.
=1815.=--January 8, a large body of English veterans were landed in
Louisiana, and attacked New Orleans; in this battle, which took place
before the news of the treaty of peace reached the combatants, Jackson
won a decisive victory.
=Principal Naval Battles=
=1812.=--August 19, the _Constitution_ destroys the British _Guerriere_,
in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
October 18, the American _Wasp_ captures the _Frolic_.
October 25, Captain Decatur in the _United States_ took the
_Macedonian_.
December 29, the _Constitution_ captures the _Java_.
=1813.=--February 24, the American _Hornet_ captures the _Peacock_.
June 1, the _Chesapeake_ is captured by the British _Shannon_.
September 10, Commodore Perry with a fleet of nine vessels destroys the
British squadron of six vessels on Lake Erie.
=1814.=--September 3, naval attack on Fort McHenry by the British fails.
September 11, Captain Macdonough, on Lake Champlain, completely defeated
a British fleet stronger than his own; this checked a serious invasion
of the enemy.
=Treaty and Results of the War=
December 24, 1814, a treaty of peace was made at Ghent, the end of the
Napoleonic wars having removed the cause for England’s offensive policy
at sea.
The provisions included:
(1) A return of captured territory.
(2) Nothing was said about impressment.
(3) No compensation was secured by the Americans for ships captured
previous to 1812.
The results of the war were:
(1) An increase of debt.
(2) An outburst of national patriotism.
(3) The removal of America from participation in European politics.
(4) The development of manufacturing.
(5) The establishment of the protective tariff policy.
=With the Cessation of Hostilities Another Epoch in Our History
Begins.=--From the day when Washington proclaimed neutrality in 1793, to
the day when the people celebrated, with bonfires and with fireworks,
and with public dinners, the return of peace, in 1815, the political and
industrial history of the United States is deeply affected by the
political history of Europe. It was questions of foreign policy, not of
domestic policy, that divided the two parties, that took up the time of
Congress, that raised up and pulled down politicians. But after 1815
foreign affairs sank into insignificance, and for the next thirty years
the history of the United States is the history of political and
economic development of the country to the east of the Mississippi
River.
=Fall of the Federalists, or Pro-British Party.=--The opposition which
the Federalists made to the war completed their ruin. In 1816 for the
last time they put forward a presidential candidate, carried three
states out of nineteen, and expired in the effort. During the eight
years of Monroe’s administration (1817-1825) but one great and
harmonious party ruled the political destinies of the country. This
remarkable period has come down to us in history as the “era of good
feelings.” It was indeed such an era, and so good were the feelings that
in 1820 when Monroe was re-elected no competitor was named to run
against him. Every state, every electoral vote save one was his. Even
that one was his. But the elector who controlled it threw it away on
John Quincy Adams lest Monroe should have the unanimous vote of the
presidential electors, an honor which has been bestowed on no man save
Washington.
=Rise of the Protective Tariff Policy.=--In the midst of this harmony,
however, events were fast ripening for a great schism. Under the
protection offered by the commercial restrictions which began with the
embargo and ended with the peace, manufactures had sprung up and
flourished. If they were to continue to flourish they must continue to
be protected, and the question of free trade and protection rose for the
first time into really national importance.
The rush of population into the West led to the admission of Indiana
(1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), and
Missouri (1820) into the Union, and brought up for serious discussion
the uses to be made of public lands lying within them.
The steamboat, which had been adopted far and wide, had produced a
demand for some improved means of communication by land to join the
greater water highways of the country and opened the era of internal
improvements.
The application of Missouri for admission into the Union brought up the
question of the admission of slavery to the west of the Mississippi. A
series of decisions of the Supreme Court, setting aside acts of the
state legislatures, gave new prominence to the question of state rights.
=A Decade of Great Political Contests.=--The Missouri question was
settled by the famous Compromise of 1820 (the first great political
compromise), which drew the line thirty-six degrees thirty minutes from
the Mississippi to the hundredth meridian, and pledged all to the north
of it, save Missouri, to freedom. But the others were not to be settled
by compromise, and in the campaign of 1824 the once harmonious
Republican party was rent in pieces. Each of the four quarters of the
Republic put a candidate in the field and “the scrub-race for the
presidency” began.
The new manufacturing interests of the East put forward John Quincy
Adams. The West, demanding internal improvements at public expense, had
for its candidate Henry Clay. William H. Crawford of Georgia (nominated
by a caucus of Congressmen) represented the old Republican party of the
South. Andrew Jackson of Tennessee stood for the new Democracy, for the
people, with all their hatred of monopolies and class control, their
prejudices, their half formed notions, their violent outbursts of
feeling.
Behind none of them was there an organized party. But taking the name of
“Adams men” and “Clay men,” “Crawford men” and “Jackson men,” the
friends of each entered the campaign and lost it. No candidate secured a
majority of the electoral college, and the House of Representatives
chose John Quincy Adams.
=The Triumph of Democracy and Industrial Expansion.=--Under the
administration of Adams (1825-1829) the men who wished for protection
and the men who wished for internal improvements at government expense
united, took the name first of National Republicans, and then of Whigs,
and, led on by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, carried through the high
protection tariffs of 1828 and 1832. The friends of Jackson and Crawford
took the name of Democrats, won the election of 1829, and during twelve
years governed the country.
In the course of these years the population of the United States rose to
seventeen million, and the number of states to twenty-six. Steam
navigation began on the ocean; two thousand miles of railroad were built
in the land; new inventions came into use; and the social and industrial
life of the people was completely revolutionized. The national debt was
paid; a surplus accumulated in the Treasury; the sale of public lands
rose from three million dollars in 1831 to twenty-five million dollars
in 1836; and the rage for internal improvements burned more fiercely
than ever. A great financial panic spread over the country; the charter
of the National Bank expired, a hundred “wild-cat banks” sprang up to
take its place, and the question of the abolition of slavery became
troublesome.
=Early Troubles in Our System of Public Finance.=--On the great
questions which grew out of this condition of affairs the position of
the two parties was well defined. The Democrats demanded a strict
construction of the Constitution; no internal improvements at public
expense; a surrender of the public lands to the state in which they lay;
no tariff for protection; no National Bank; no agitation of the question
of the abolition of slavery; the establishment of subtreasuries for the
safe keeping of the public funds, and the distribution of the surplus
revenue. The Whigs demanded a recharter of the National Bank; a tariff
for protection; the expenditure of the surplus on internal improvements;
the distribution of the money derived from the sale of public lands; a
limitation of the veto power of the President; and no removals from
office for political reasons.
The Democrats, true to their principles, and having the power, carried
them out. They destroyed the Bank; they defeated bill after bill for the
construction of roads and canals; they distributed thirty-eight million
dollars of the surplus revenue among the states, and by the cartage of
immense sums of money from the East to the far distant West, hastened
that inevitable financial crisis known as the “panic of 1837.”
Andrew Jackson had just been succeeded in the presidency by Martin Van
Buren (1837-1841) and on him the storm burst in all its fury. But he
stood it bravely, held to a strict construction of the Constitution,
insisted that the panic would right itself without interference by the
Government, and stoutly refused to meddle. Since the refusal of Congress
to recharter the Bank of the United States, whose charter expired in
1836, the revenue of the Government had been deposited in certain “pet
banks” designated by the Secretary of the Treasury. Every one of them
failed in the panic of 1837. Van Buren therefore recommended “the
divorce of Bank and State,” and after a struggle of three years his
friends carried the “subtreasury” scheme in 1840. This law cast off all
connection between the state banks and the Government, put the
collectors of the revenue under heavy bonds to keep the money safely
till called for by the Secretary of the Treasury, and limited payments
to or by the United States to specie.
=National Conventions and Rise of Slavery Issue.=--The year 1840 was
presidential year, and is memorable for the introduction of new
political methods; for the rise of a new and vigorous party; and for the
appearance of a new political issue. The new machinery consisted in the
permanent introduction of the national convention for the nomination of
a president, now used by the Democrats for the second time, and by the
Whigs for the first; in the promulgation of a party platform by the
convention, now used by the Democrats for the first time; and in the use
of mass meetings, processions, songs, and all the paraphernalia of a
modern campaign by the Whigs.
The new party was the Liberty Party, and the new issue the “absolute and
unqualified divorce of the general Government from slavery, and the
restoration of equality of rights among men.” The principles of that
party were: slavery is against natural right, is strictly local, is a
state institution, and derives no support from the authority of
Congress, which has no power to set up or continue slavery anywhere;
every treaty, every act, establishing, favoring, or continuing slavery
in the District of Columbia, in the territories, on the high seas, is,
therefore, unconstitutional.
=The Short-lived Era of the Whigs.=--The candidate of this party was
James Gillespie Birney. The Democrats nominated Martin Van Buren. The
Whigs put forward William Henry Harrison and elected him. Harrison died
one month after his inauguration, and John Tyler, the Vice-President and
a Democrat of the Calhoun wing, became President.
The Whig policy as sketched by Clay was the repeal of the Subtreasury
Act; the charter of a National Bank; tariff for protection; and the
distribution of the sales of public lands. To the repeal of the
Subtreasury Act Tyler gladly assented. To the establishment of a bank
even when called “Fiscal Corporation,” he would not assent, and, having
twice vetoed such bills, was read out of the party by a formal manifesto
issued by Whig congressmen.
It mattered little, however, for the question of the hour was not the
bank, nor the tariff, nor the distribution of the sales of lands, but
the annexation of the republic Texas. Joined to the demand for the
reoccupation of Oregon, it became the chief plank in the Democratic
platform of 1844. The Whig platform said not a word on the subject, and
the Liberty Party, turning with loathing from the cowardice of Clay,
voted again for Birney, gave the State of New York to the Democrats, and
with it the presidency.
=The Annexation of Texas, and Wilmot Proviso.=--Accepting the result of
the election as “instruction from the people,” Congress passed the
needed act and Tyler in the last hours of his administration declared
Texas annexed.
The boundary of the new state was ill-defined. Texas claimed to the Rio
Grande. Mexico would probably have acknowledged the Nueces River. The
United States attempted to enforce the claim of Texas, sent troops to
the Rio Grande, and so brought on the Mexican war.
At the close of the Mexican war the boundary of the United States was
carried south from forty-two degrees to the Gila River, and what is now
California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and more than half of
Wyoming and Colorado were added to the public domain. While the war was
still raging, Polk, who had succeeded Tyler, asked for two million
dollars to aid him in negotiating peace. Well knowing that the money was
to be used to buy land from Mexico, David Wilmot moved in the House of
Representatives that from all territory bought with the money slavery
should be excluded. This was the famous Wilmot proviso. It failed of
adoption and the territory was acquired in 1848, with its character as
to slavery or freedom wholly undetermined.
=The Preliminary Struggle over the Slave Problem.=--And now the old
parties began to break up. Democrats who believed in the Wilmot proviso,
and Whigs who detested the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and
the extension of slavery went over in a body to the Liberty Party,
formed with it the Freesoil Party, nominated Martin Van Buren, and gave
him three hundred thousand votes. In their platform they declared that
Congress had no more power to make a slave than to make a king; that
they accepted the issue thrust on them by the South; that to the demand
for more slave states and more slave territories they answered, no more
slave states, no more slave territories; and that on their banner was
inscribed “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men.” As the
defection of Whigs to the Liberty Party in 1844 gave New York state to
the Democrats and elected Polk, so the defection of Democrats to the
Free Soilers in 1848 gave New York to the Whigs and elected Taylor. As
Harrison, the first Whig president, died one month after taking office,
so Taylor, the second Whig president, died suddenly when a little over
one year in office, just as the great Whig compromise of 1850 was
closing. The imperative need of civil government in the new territory,
the discovery of gold in California, the rush of men from all parts of
the earth to the Pacific Coast forced Congress to establish organized
territories. The question was: shall they be opened or closed to
slavery? But, as the soil had been free when acquired from Mexico, the
question really was: shall the United States establish slavery?