building the new country

Foreign Issues under G. Wash

• FR Rev

  • Jefferson wanted to help FR, Wash didn’t - did not like allies

  • lead to Neutrality Proclamation of 1793

  • Napoleon saved the day in FR, began his world domination tour

• Impressment

  • FR and BR were kidnapping AM soldiers, forcing us to fight for them

• Jay’s Treaty 1794

  • meant to stop Impressment + get BR to actually leave the US soil

  • didn’t work bcuz Jay wasn’t that great of a negotiator

    • led to War of 1812

• Pickney Treaty 1795 w/SP

  • opened up port of New Orleans + Mississippi River

Farewell Address

• 32 pages long bcuz of Hamilton and Madison

• 4 points to the address

  • maintain national unity

  • obey + support constitution

  • beware of political parties

  • don’t get into alliances

Political Parties

• Federalists and Republicans (aka anti-federalists aka democratic republicans)

• Federalists believed the rich should provide national leadership/run gov bcuz they were more educated

1796 Election

• Adams (Federalist) wins, Jefferson (ant-Federalist) is VP

  • loser for pres race became the VP

  • Jefferson later becomes Pres, undoes everything Adams did (broke their friendship; only reconciled bcuz a friend tricked them into it/wrote them fake apology letters from each other)

• Adams = 1st Pres to be in the White House

  • WH only lasts a few years, was burned down in War of 1812

• Relations with BR/FR worsen due to impressment

  • BR was stealing sailors bcuz they needed more to fight FR (also vice-versa)

• XYZ Affair in FR w/PM Talleyrand

  • Adams sends ambassadors to FR to try resolving issue related to impressment

  • XYZ told them they needed to $250K if they wanted to see the PM

    • FR wanted them to go back to Congress and get the money; 3 months spent going to FR was a waste

  • when US ambassadors told Adams, Congress wanted to go to war w/FR

• Alien + Sedition Acts

  • passed by Adams in response to XYZ Affair

  • Alien Act: they can deport any immigrant they thought was a danger

    • targeted FR ppl

  • Sedition Act: if anyone says anything neg about gov, they can be fined/jailed (limited freedom of speech)

• Kentucky + Virginia Resolutions

  • written by Jefferson, pointing out to everyone the Pres is going against Bill of Rights

  • argue that states should have power to declare federal laws as unconstitutional/void

• Adams began building US Navy

  • could see a war was brewing w/FR + BR

• Midnight Judges

  • Adams last night as Pres: appoints multiple federalist judges

  • did it to spite Jefferson

Abigail Adams

• most recognized woman of the AM Rev

• wrote 12K letters, remembered for “remember the ladies”

  • didn’t want ppl to forget all the stuff women did in the AM Rev war

• Republican Motherhood- believed women should be educated

• Adams saw her as equal; she controlled their finances; called “Madam Pres”

• angry there were no memorials to her husband

Jefferson as Pres

• Election of 1800 vs Burr

  • Jeff and Burr tied for Pres

  • sent to House of Rep to choose who would be Pres

  • A. Ham voted for Jeff, swayed the rest of the Reps, Jeff won

  • led to 12th amendment

• aka Rev of 1800

  • ppl thought that switching from Federalist to anti-Federalist would cause a rebellion (it didn’t)

• represented the “Common Man”

  • pro-agriculture (90% of population)

• Marshall Court

  • Marbury v Madison: judicial review

    • Supreme Court has the final say

  • McCulloch v Maryland

    • state gov cannot tax the federal gov

  • Cohens v Virginia

    • can’t play the lottery in a state that you don’t live in

    • can’t sell lottery tickets across state lines

  • Gibbons v Ogden: interstate commerce

    • Congress is in charge of interstate trade

    • companies have to publish their prices/rates for shipping so everyone knows

  • Dartmouth College v Woodward

    • if a school is established as a private school, it can’t become a public school

  • Fletch v Peck

    • deals w/land titles

    • if you buy a piece of land, when you sell it, the title goes with it

• Louisiana Purchase

  • doubled the size of US (made 13 new states)

  • Jeff sent Livingston to FR bcuz we wanted just the port of New Orleans; offered $10M for it; Napoleon said he’d sell entire LA land for $15M (4 cents per acre)

    • FR needed the money to fight all their wars (v. BR, Haiti Rev, yellow fever was killing a lot of soldiers)

      • SP had previously transferred the land to FR

  • happened May 2, 1803

  • 827K sq mi; took 863 days to explore 7689 miles

    • Lewis + Clark exploration (Corps of Discovery) w/help of Sacagawea

  • Jefferson struggled w/purchase bcuz he was a strict constructionist (Constitution never said anything about buying land from other countries)

    • ppl questioned him about it, he said “you’ll thank me later

• Barbary Pirates

  • b4, BR had been protecting US from pirates; no more when AM Rev

    • pirates: from states off of N. Africa; Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, Algiers

  • US paid pirates bribes of $80K per year for them to leave us alone (prior to Jeff)

  • Jeff stopped paying bribes, pirates came after US full force

    • also stopped building US Navy (it was Adams idea)

      • came back to bite us in War of 1812

  • caused the Tripoli War

Path to War of 1812:

• Non-Intercourse Act 1806

  • Jeff was thinking, if I stop trading w/foreign countries, won’t have ships out vulnerable to impressment + pirates

  • stopped BR imports

  • led to stores being closed + increased smuggling

• Embargo Act 1807

  • stopped ALL foreign trade (import AND export)

  • hurt N. English states, was repealed

• Non Intercourse Act 1809

  • trade open to all foreign countries EXCEPT BR + Fr

    • ppl didn’t like - they had the best goods

• Macon’s Bill No. 2, 1810 (Madison)

  • opens trade with BR + FR

War of 1812

• aka “2nd War for Independence” or “Mr Madison’s War”

• started for 2 reasons:

  1. impressment

     1. tried to work it out (Jay’s Treaty), didn’t work

  2. Brits were arming the Native AMs to go against us

• War Hawks: pro-War of 1812; Clay and Calhoun

  • Clay = senator, comes up a lot later

  • Calhoun = “the mouth of the south” during Civil War

• Federalists were anti-war

  • war would ruin trade w/BR + other countries, destroying NE states’ economies

• some battles

  • Battle of Tippecanoe

    • Harrison vs Tecumseh + the Prophet

    • battle lasted <2 hrs; US defeated confederacy of tribes

    • Harrison becomes hero; later runs for Pres, called himself “Tippecanoe”

      • died 40 days after being inaugurated; got sick after giving a rlly long speech in the cold

  • Battle of Horseshoe Bend

    • intro to Andrew Jackson

      • hates Natives and BR

      • goes to Fort Mims w/his men; hoped to rest; saw 300 women + kids who had been scalped

      • killed over 500 Creek Indians + cut off their noses and ears for revenge

  • BR burned down the White House; revenge for US burning down Parliament during Battle of York)

    • Dolley Madison (First Lady) grabbed any valuable things in the White House she saw

  • Fort McHenry

    • Francis Scott Key, lawyer, rowed a boat from Fort McHenry to a BR ship docked away from the shore

    • negotiated a one-on-one exchange of BR + US POWs

    • BR told him sure, but they were going to wipe out Fort McHenry (many women+kids were there); would only stop when their flag was lowered

    • Key told the US POWs; during the attack, he could hear them praying that the flag would stay up

    • attack is over, gets the POWs, went to check on the flag - it was being held up by men (dead + alive)

    • Key wrote “the Defense of Fort McHenry” → became the Star Spangled Banner

  • Treaty of Ghent, Dec 1814 in Belgium

    • kinda weak, they basically just went back to how things were b4 the war

    • no one knew about it for a while (no new outlet)

  • Battle of New Orleans, Jan 1815

    • ppl didnt know war was over; US troops wanted to block BR from getting the port of New Orleans, so that they couldn’t enter the country

    • Andrew Jackson made a curfew, enlisted literally anyone he could find; they won the battle

      • if BR had won, they would have ignored Treaty of Ghent

• Hartford Convention - NE state Federalists meet secretly w/BR to try and end the war

  • was treason; killed the Federalist party

• impacts of War of 1812

  • ruined economy

  • need to rebuild the White House

  • Federalist party is dead

  • nationalism skyrocketed

  • gained foreign respect

  • ushered US into “Era of Good Feelings”

    • lasts for ~3yrs