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James Madison
When Thomas Jefferson announced his retirement, his secretary of state and the
'Father of the Constitution,' James Madison, was easily elected the fourth
president of the United States, continuing the Virginia dynasty. He inherited a mess. The economy was
struggling, he essentially had a war on two fronts and the political system was in
shambles. Sounds like the kind of problems modern presidents have had to
deal with.
First, let's go back - back to the beginning. Native Americans had lived
up and down the East Coast until Europeans came. Ever since that time, they'd been pushed steadily westward
into conflict with whites and each other. They had been safe beyond the
Proclamation Line after 1763, but then the 1783 Treaty of Paris delivered all of
that land into American hands, and white settlers poured in.
It seemed there was nowhere safe for many tribes to go. Native Americans found themselves
faced with a dilemma: join 'em or beat 'em? Madison had taken office when a group based in present-day Indiana finally decided to try and beat 'em.
A Shawnee leader named Tecumseh and his brother (who was commonly called
'The Prophet') organized a social network to revive native religion, resist
all white ways and oppose the U.S. government. They believed they would gain a northwest state for themselves.
After building Prophetstown at the junction of the Tippecanoe and Wabash
Rivers, they began attacking settlements.
The governor of the newly created Indiana Territory was General (and
future president) William Henry Harrison. After learning that the British were supplying money and weapons to
Tecumseh, Harrison attacked and destroyed Prophetstown at the Battle of Tippecanoe. However, the resistance and
attacks on settlements continued on as part of the broader War of 1812 until
Tecumseh himself was killed.
Madison's Trouble in the EastThe War of 1812 is kind of a black hole in American history. Most people know that it happened, but not many people
seem to know anything about it. So let's start with some big things: Two future presidents were heroes of the War of 1812. The White House was burned
down. America's national anthem, the 'Star-Spangled Banner', was written
during one of its battles.
And, it's why the Native Americans ended up west of the Mississippi
River. If you can accept that these events make the War of 1812 worth
understanding, maybe you can believe that this so-called 'second
war of independence' is when Britain finally acknowledged that the United States had grown up
and moved out, so to speak.
Since taking office, Madison had been trying to maintain U.S.
neutrality in the Napoleonic Wars. But Britain seemed determined to drag its former colonies into war. Congress lifted the Embargo Act
of 1807, but then Britain interfered to keep America from
trading with France.
More importantly, the British navy had a desertion problem.
Many sailors who had been pressed into service jumped ship as soon as they had the chance, so
for years the British fleet had been stopping American ships to
search for their deserters, sometimes pressing American citizens into service to boot.
The trade restrictions and impressment controversy were
frustrating, but each of them alone wasn't really enough for President Madison to want to declare war on
Britain. But then you add in the fact that Britain had been helping the Indians fight on the frontier, and
together all of these factors were just a little too much for some people.
The so-called 'War Hawks' in Congress convinced President
Madison to declare war in June 1812. Federalists in the Northeast
strongly opposed the war, but they didn't have enough clout to keep the President from being
reelected that year.
Fighting the War of 1812President Madison hadn't really
been prepared for a prolonged war. He was under the delusion that with Britain at war with France, the state
militias could easily capture Canada, and a treaty would quickly follow. But Britain had its own army
and navy, plus the coalition under Tecumseh and Canadian troops.
The invasion of Canada was a total failure. But three battles in 1813
did help the U.S. get control of the western frontier. First, William Henry Harrison secured Detroit and finally defeated Tecumseh in the same fight. Then Commodore Oliver Perry captured an entire
British naval squadron in the Battle of Lake Erie.
Farther south, General (and another future president)
Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek nation in 1814, subduing
the Indian resistance. It wasn't a moment too soon for the
Americans, since the war in the East was about to get a lot more
difficult.
Britain's Royal Navy had finally run Napoleon out of town and put
France in its place. Now they turned all of their attention to fighting America. The British
navy waged fierce war at sea, and troops poured into the East Coast,
fighting costly battles against weak American militia forces.
They set fire to Washington, D.C., including the Capitol building and the White House. Thankfully, most
of the city was saved by a freak rainstorm, and the president's wife, Dolly Madison, had the foresight to rescue some treasured items from
their home, including George Washington's portrait and possibly an original copy of the Constitution.
Next, the British navy tried to capture the strategic city of Baltimore, blasting
Ft. McHenry all day and most of the night. An American lawyer named
Francis Scott Key had crossed enemy lines to negotiate a prisoner exchange and was being held on a British ship throughout the battle. He watched
intently, but when the barrage stopped, it was too dark for him to see whose flag
was flying over the fort.
Had the British barrage stopped because the walls had been
breached, or had they given up? He wouldn't be able to tell until
dawn. When he saw an American flag in the morning, he was
inspired to write a poem, which was later set to music, and the first verse became America's
national anthem in 1916.
Ending the War of 1812Three events began to unfold
simultaneously. Leaders on both sides could see that neither side had much to gain by continuing the war, so diplomats in Ghent (called Belgium today) started
talking peace. But few people in America knew about that.
Federalists in New England, who had opposed the war from the
beginning, met to discuss seceding from the Union. They planned to
form a new nation and negotiate a favorable peace treaty with
Britain on their own. Also, at the same time, a British fleet was heading toward New Orleans.
The first of these parties to conclude their business were the diplomats in
Ghent. They reached an agreement on Christmas Eve 1814, and the Treaty of
Ghent essentially returned everything to the way it had been before the war
started. Britain abandoned their Indian allies once again but did pay the U.S.
government for a number of slaves who had escaped to Canada.
But news traveled slowly from Europe to America back then, and the British threw everything they had at New
Orleans, intending to seize control of the Mississippi River. Andrew Jackson
mounted a seemingly miraculous defense with a force made up of state militia, pirates, free blacks and a few regular army soldiers. He killed the British
general in charge and won the Battle of New Orleans.
News of the victory reached Washington about the same time that news of the Treaty of Ghent
arrived, and as it just so happened, that was exactly when the New England Federalists were
about to deliver their secession demands to the President. That
was the end of the Federalist Party in America.
Congress ratified the Treaty of Ghent on February 17, 1815. Despite heavy casualties and
gaining basically nothing, the U.S. felt they had defended themselves in a second war of independence
against Britain, boosting American self-confidence and nationalism. An
'Era of Good Feelings' was about to begin.
The Era of Good FeelingsDespite enduring a total naval blockade and heavy losses, many Americans felt
that the nation had won the War of 1812. General Andrew Jackson's ragtag force
of free blacks, pirates and militia defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans after the Treaty of Ghent was
signed, but Americans didn't know that at the time.
It certainly appeared that Jackson's heroic victory, on the
heels of Britain's failed invasion of Baltimore, had forced the British to surrender. Federalists who had intended to secede New England
in protest over the war were thoroughly discredited and their party gone for good from federal
politics.
Once America was done fighting the British, it could turn its attention to an old problem: Barbary Pirates. Though Jefferson had trounced them a decade
earlier, the American military had been kind of busy during the War of 1812, and
this left merchant ships in the Mediterranean vulnerable once again.
The pirates were back to their old tricks of capturing cargo and crew, holding them for ransom or selling them into
slavery.
So when the War of 1812 was over, Madison dispatched the navy back to the
North African Coast for the Second Barbary War, which lasted about two weeks. The U.S. navy captured every
Algerian ship it encountered, and by the time they had reached Algiers,
threatened to destroy the city if all Christian captives (both American and
European) were not immediately released and the value of seized cargo
wasn't reimbursed.
The treaty signed onboard an American ship in 1815 ended
America's pirate problem in the Mediterranean for good. By
outward appearances, there was consensus in politics,
improvement in the economy and peace abroad. It was the
beginning of the Era of Good Feelings.
Madison's Economic ReformsOf course, things aren't always as good
as they seem. The Democratic-Republicans might have been the only
viable political party on a national level, but the nation was actually deeply
divided over several issues, especially its finances. At first, President Madison wanted to keep going down the road
Jefferson had taken, undoing some of Hamilton's economic policies.
For example, the Democratic-Republicans had totally opposed the Bank of the United States. Madison
allowed the Bank's 20-year charter to expire during his first term, and he
refused to sign a bill that reauthorized it. The party had believed that a national bank was unconstitutional and that it
threatened to concentrate financial power with the elite at the expense of
yeoman farmers.
But then came the War of 1812, and Madison realized just how difficult it was to finance a war without a national bank, so he finally signed a bill chartering the Second Bank of the United
States, which helped stabilize the economy.
America's economic system today is so interwoven with the Federal Reserve
that it's difficult to conceive of the nation without a national bank. But Madison's
next two moves are a little easier to imagine: taxes and highways. Madison announced his support for Speaker of
the House Henry Clay's American System, which included a protective
tariff and several internal improvements.
The tariff was designed to encourage the purchase of
domestic goods and was only approved for three years. The internal improvements were
roads and canals that Madison said would 'bind more closely
together the various parts of our extended confederacy.'
Now today, some people seem to like taking the scenic route. But most of the time, if you need to just get somewhere efficiently, you take the interstate, right? And you probably know that
before there were interstates and airplanes, people took trains.
We take for granted that the federal government pays for this kind of internal
improvement, but many, many Americans back then thought this was a massive overreach of power, and internal
improvements became one of the most divisive political issues of the 19th
century. But for the time being, things seemed pretty good for Americans - as
long as they were white.
Subduing MinoritiesWhen President Madison first took office, he promoted a view of Native Americans that was sort of childlike: 'They might be savages, but it's only
because they don't know any better. So we have to help them.' To his credit, Madison met with representatives of
many nations on several occasions and actually ordered the Army at one point to protect their lands from encroaching
settlers.
But this only lasted until the Battle of Tippecanoe, part of the western conflict leading up to the War of 1812. After that, Native Americans in the Midwest were forced off their land and pushed
even farther west. Farther south, a British fort in Florida had been
offered to displaced Native Americans.
When they refused it, the fort was occupied by fugitive slaves. Though this was British land, the U.S. government
was concerned that the so-called 'Negro Fort' would encourage more slaves to
escape south. So in 1816, the army provoked the fort, and after a garrison fired a cannon, the army destroyed the
fort and most of the families inside.