James Monroe (1817-1825)

• Era of Good Feelings• Missouri Compromise• Henry Clay (The Great Compromiser) • Adams-Onis Treaty• Monroe Doctrine• Hudson River School of Arts

Era of Good Feelings• At the beginning of Monroe’s presidency, Americans

were feeling generally optimistic. The nation had declared victory in the War of 1812 and the economy was booming.

• President James Monroe revived the presidential tour of the country, which was first undertaken by George Washington.

• The trip took fifteen weeks and allowed Monroe to come in contact with more people than any previous sitting President.

• The Boston Columbian Centinel described his reception in Massachusetts as the beginning of an "Era of Good Feelings" for the nation -- a phrase that is now often used to describe Monroe's presidency.

Missouri Compromise• Early in 1819, settlers in the Missouri Territory

applied for admission to the Union. • Congressional debate on Missouri exploded

when Congressman James Tallmadge, Jr. of New York attached two amendments to the statehood bill. The first barred new slaves from entering the state the second emancipated all Missouri slaves born after admission upon their 25th birthday. In other words, the Tallmadge amendments would admit Missouri only as a free state.

Missouri Compromise, con’t…• Massachusetts allowed its far northern

counties to apply for admission to the Union as the free, or non-slave, state of Maine, thus offsetting fears that the South would gain votes in the Senate with the admission of Missouri.

• Additionally, it was agreed that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state in return for the South's willingness to outlaw slavery in western territories above the 36/30' north latitude line.

• That line would open present-day Arkansas and Oklahoma to slavery but would forbid it throughout the rest of the Louisiana Territory -- land that would eventually be organized into nine states.

Henry Clay

Henry Clay (The Great Compromiser)• House Speaker Henry Clay promotes plan as the American

System: o national currency, transportation facilitate tradeo Erie Canal links Hudson River to Lake Erie: Atlantic to

Great Lakes

Adams-Onis Treaty• For years, southern plantation owners and white

farmers in Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina had lost runaway slaves to the Florida swamps.

• Seminole and Creek Indians offered refuge to these slaves and led raids against white settlers in the border regions.

• The U.S. government could do little about the problem because the swamps lay deep within Spanish Florida. If the United States moved decisively against the Seminoles, it would risk war with Spain. Although the United States had tried to convince Spain to cede the territory on various occasions, its efforts had failed.

• With the end of the War of 1812, the U.S. government turned its attention to the raids.

Adams-Onis Treaty• President Monroe sent General Andrew Jackson,

the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, to the Florida border in 1818 to stop the incursions.

• Jackson’s troops invaded Florida, captured a Spanish fort at St. Marks, took control of Pensacola, and deposed the Spanish governor. He also executed two British citizens whom he accused of having incited the Seminoles to raid American settlements.

• To the administration, the entire affair illustrated the lack of control Spain had over the region. Secretary of State Adams thought that he could use the occasion to pressure Spain to sell all of Florida to the United States.

Adams-Onis Treaty• Adams convinced Spain to sell Florida to the

United States. • In return, the United States agreed to

relinquish its claims on Texas and assume responsibility for $5 million that the Spanish government owed American citizens.

• The resulting treaty, known as the Adams-Onís Treaty of 1819 -- named after John Quincy Adams and Luis de Onís, the Spanish minister -- was hailed as a great success.

Monroe Doctrine• Stated that European countries should no longer

consider the Western Hemisphere open to new colonization

• This statement, which in the 1850s came to be known as the Monroe Doctrine

• The Monroe Doctrine constituted the first significant policy statement by the United States on the future of the Western Hemisphere.

• Monroe saw the United States as a model and protector to the new Latin American republics.

Hudson River School of Arts

• A group of American landscape painters of the mid-nineteenth century, who took a Romantic approach to depicting the Hudson River Valley, and of the Catskill, Berkshire, and White Mountains, as well as lands further west. As the American frontier moved westward, the Hudson River painters' views of this expanding territory found an enthusiastic audience. Their pictures were often brashly theatrical, embracing moral or literary associations.

Thomas Doughty (American, 1793-1856), Denning's Point, Hudson River, c. 1839

Asher Brown Durand (1796–1886) The Beeches, 1845

Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits, 1849