Cronyism

CHAPTER 12

THE CULMINATION OF THE AMERICAN SYSTEM: ENLARGING THE EMPIRE

Nationalizing the West

During the Era of Corruption, the National Republicans augmented the empire by imposing new rules on western states, aggressing on Spanish lands, and forcing foreign markets to purchase American manufactures. This imperialism was the fulfillment of the American System. But reactionaries discovered that it would not come easily. After the Panic of 1819, admitting new states reignited slavery controversies, causing National Republicans to impose a divisive federal solution that strengthened slavery and weakened the rights of states— the Missouri Compromise. In addition, the successive imperialist measures—the Adams-Onís Treaty, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Panama Congress—gradually alarmed and strengthened the emerging Jacksonian reformers.

After the war, the troubling issue of slavery—the embodiment of power over liberty—split along geographical lines. Although the South contained more anti-slavery societies and free blacks than the North, slaves in the North had declined by 55 percent since 1790 while increasing 130 percent in the South. Slavery survived, not because of technological advancements related to agriculture, but because of the nationalizing Constitution and its fugitive slave clause (along with the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act) that socialized enforcement costs and made it harder for slaves to escape. State regulations buttressed the fugitive slave clause, most notably mandatory slave patrols composed of poor white men. Aside from the obvious financial penalty, many southerners, including Old Republicans, hesitated to free slaves, because they firmly believed free blacks could not peacefully coexist with whites. After prohibiting the international slave trade in 1808, their only solutions were to diffuse slaves throughout the western territories or export them back to Africa. Unfortunately, domestic slave breeders and expansionist planters also supported these “solutions” to boost the prices of their human property.

One cannot stress enough that northerners shared southerners’ views on race relations. The main difference was that the South’s black population averaged 37 percent, compared to the North’s 2 percent. The North’s small black population made anti-slavery positions more palatable, but the region adamantly wanted to maintain current demographics: northerners supported colonization schemes and passed laws restricting interracial marriage, education, suffrage, immigration, and employment. Most northerners concentrated their ire not on slavery per se but on the three-fifths clause that increased southern representation and impeded pro-North legislation, particularly protectionist tariffs. Outside of a miniscule minority, genuine abolitionist sentiment did not exist in the country.

The grounds for a fight lay in the West, where new states could be created. Outside of the international slave trade and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that expressly prohibited slavery in the Midwest, the legislative branch let territories autonomously decide on the slavery issue but reserved the right to regulate it. The territories could then form states and petition Congress for acceptance into the Union. By and large, congressmen enforced this policy and did not consciously try to balance “free” and “slave” states. Unfortunately, Congress’ approach suffered from a fateful contradiction: it promoted liberty by letting settlers decide territorial policy, but promoted power by sanctioning involuntary servitude.

The panic changed everything. The dramatic collapse in agricultural prices and aggravated debt burdens caused southern planters to realize that solvency required increased production from slave labor, which reduced the region’s anti-slavery sentiments. The price plunge also forced southerners to shake off their postwar protectionism. Southern sentiments collided with the North’s increased affinity for high tariffs, which blamed any resistance on the three-fifths clause. It only took one policy proposal to thrust these new tensions out into the open. In February 1819, the House considered admitting Missouri, a state that autonomously decided to permit slavery. Congressman James Tallmadge of New York, once private secretary to Governor George Clinton, unexpectedly dropped a bombshell: a gradual emancipation amendment that prohibited the further introduction of slaves into Missouri and freed the children of slaves once they turned twenty-five.

While the rest of the country concentrated on the business downturn, the Tallmadge Amendment shocked every politician. Although the New Yorker wanted to reduce southern representation, he genuinely adhered to some antislavery principles. Tallmadge previously championed New York’s gradual emancipation plan of 1817 and protested Illinois’ state constitution because it was not antislavery enough. For Tallmadge, Missouri’s small slave population warranted nipping slavery in the bud. Significantly, Tallmadge soon emphasized that he did not want the same for slave-heavy Alabama, admitted as a state in December 1819, because a large free black population could lead to a “servile war” that would threaten “the safety of the white population.” Thus, even according to this antislavery advocate, Congress could not touch slavery in the South.

As George Dangerfield properly noted, the “only real accommodation” would have been to prohibit slavery in Missouri and lower tariffs, but the depression wrecked this option. The Missouri controversy escalated after Maine entered the picture. In June 1819, Massachusetts let Maine secede and form an independent state but stipulated that Congress must agree by March 1820. However, southerners made it very clear that unless Congress permitted Missouri to decide its own rules regarding slavery, they would fight Maine’s entry into the Union.

A compromise only emerged after northern Republicans realized that Federalists politically benefited from the gridlock. While some Federalists did harbor genuine antislavery sentiments, Martin Van Buren correctly insisted they held “rather political than philanthropical” motives.Speaker Henry Clay prepared the compromise. The Kentuckian, a slave owner who wanted Missourians to choose, feared that the controversy would lead to the creation of “three distinct confederacies.” This secession posed a serious problem for someone who wanted to erect an imperial American System. Clay’s top-down solution contained three components: Congress would make Maine a free state, Missouri a slave state, and then crucially erect a dividing line that geographically determined which new states could permit slavery. Except for Missouri, Congress forbid slavery in the land above the line (the rest of the Louisiana Purchase) and sanctioned it in the land below the line (the Arkansas Territory). In March 1820, Congress passed the compromise.

With this decision, Congress essentially nationalized the West. Before, the imperial domain’s western extremities maintained some semblance of decentralization, because settlers could still independently decide what territorial governments to create and on what terms they would join as states. This bore similarities with Jefferson’s Empire of Liberty, though without the essential feature where settlers could create polities separate from the United States. Now, Congress decided on what terms states could join the Union. This decision temporarily saved the empire, but ominously inaugurated the debate over the extent of the Constitution’s fugitive slave clause.

The Missouri Compromise directly resulted from the Louisiana Purchase. Sooner or later, expansion across the continent would stir up the slavery controversy. Of course, without the Louisiana Purchase, settlers moving west could have established their own governments separate from the United States. This would have crippled the institution of slavery due to the emergence of free polities in northern Louisiana without any nationalizing fugitive slave clause. In fact, Clay’s fear of multiple confederacies was what should have not only happened after the Missouri Crisis but also during the earlier drive for the Constitution. Instead, the desire to build a mighty empire sabotaged this natural tendency toward decentralization, ensuring slavery would grow and cause problems down the road.

Old Republicans recognized the Missouri Compromise’s consolidation. They firmly believed people possessed the right to decide whether their state constitutions would allow slavery, much like they possessed the right to decide other internal regulations relating to private property. The deal smacked of the centralizing trends that had accelerated with Madison’s postwar nationalism, Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee (1816), McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), and the protectionist Baldwin bill of 1820. Or, in the words of William Belko, restrictions on admitting states “merely symbolized the advance of power over liberty . . . in the very same manner as . . . the American System, and nothing more.”

John Taylor of Caroline summed up Old Republican views best in Construction Construed and Constitutions Vindicated (1820): conniving speculators, bankers, and manufacturers concocted the entire controversy. “The Missouri project,” wrote the Virginian, “begot the idea of using slavery as an instrument for affecting the balance of power.” Taylor earnestly believed that Congress’ meddling in slavery destroyed federalism and created a sectional power struggle in total violation of the Tenth Amendment. According to Taylor, “Missouri has no right to compel Maine to admit of slavery, nor Maine any right to compel Missouri to prohibit it, because each state has a right to think for itself.” The dividing line only pitted North against South and opened the door for one group to mercilessly dominate the other.

John Randolph had previously written a congressional report condemning the capital’s slave trade, helped form the American Colonization Society, and privately praised an anti-slavery speech during the Missouri debates. However, he feared that the compromise would make the South more defensive of slavery and increase regional animosity. In February 1820 Randolph privately remarked that the agitators “have almost reconciled me to negro slavery. They have produced a revulsion even on my mind; what then must be the effect on those who had no scruples on the subject?” Antislavery was now “put back a century, certainly a generation, by the unprincipled conduct of ambitious men.”

Yet as cogent as the Old Republicans’ arguments sounded, they did not go far enough. Instead of attacking slavery, they openly defended it. The Missouri Compromise was crony not because it restricted settlers’ property rights, but because it nationalized the West and protected slave owners’ unjust property rights. Richard Ellis emphasizes that Old Republicans “never made the defense of slavery a central political concern” and their “arguments tended to take the form of ad hoc defensive responses.” However, their heightened defense of slavery after the Missouri Crisis turned into a worrisome trend.

In addition, the sting of northern insistence jolted southern nationalists, the group that Old Republicans always tried to sway. To these interventionists, slavery was less of a “necessary evil” and more of a “positive good.” The Deep South, from the days of Federalist Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, held such views. Now faced with a threat, the southern National Republicans defended, and would continue to defend, the institution with vigor. Furthermore, Old Republicans started to make similar arguments. Randolph, previously reluctant about the institution, now preferred to discard the Declaration of Independence rather than slavery. Even more drastic, Nathaniel Macon and William Smith provided a positive defense. While Macon previously regretted slavery, he now declared that slaves were happy to work on the plantations and the institution was for the mutual benefit of all. Smith extolled slavery’s virtues and grounded its roots in Christianity. The South Carolinian’s statement was indicative of the growing sentiment in his home state, which viewed the issue with increasing anxiety because of its heavy slave population.

After the Missouri Crisis ended, the slavery controversy returned to dormancy. Old Republicans still genuinely believed in the benefits of liberty and confederation, only now with slightly more of a pro-slavery bent. Far more worrisome to them than slavery, as well as the Radicals and Jacksonians, was the emerging imperialist program—the hall-mark of the National Republicans’ consolidating American System.

The Birth of Imperialism

Foreign policy played a crucial, albeit neglected, role in the National Republicans’ designs. Apart from pleasing expansionists, imperialistic measures in South America benefitted politically connected merchants and manufacturers in the North, particularly the Boston Associates. The central blame for their global empire, from acquiring Florida to the Monroe Doctrine and then the Panama Congress, can be laid at the doorstep of John Quincy Adams. Indeed, when it comes to international relations, this period must be understood as the Age of Adams. Only the libertarian Jacksonians stymied his grand designs.

The National Republicans split into two imperialist doctrines regarding South America. The first, expressed by Speaker Clay, called for recognition to those revolting against the Spanish. Clay worried that US manufacturers, subsidized by protective tariffs, would suffer losses from overproduction if the nation did not open up new markets. In May 1820, Clay declared that the “American System” referred to the Western Hemisphere, and “in relation to South America, the people of the United States will occupy the same position as the people of New England do the rest of the United States.” He envisioned a mercantilist arrangement similar to Great Britain and the colonies before the Revolutionary War, a perfect complement to his adulations of Napoleon in 1824. After providing explicit assistance to the rebels, Clay wanted Congress to increase tariffs and encourage discriminatory trade legislation in South American markets.

President Monroe and Secretary of State John Quincy Adams championed the second imperialistic program—clandestine aid. The administration supported nominal neutrality toward South America because it wanted a friendly Spain to sell Florida. In addition, the Boston Associates, such as Thomas H. Perkins, did not want to jeopardize their profitable trade with Spain, Cuba, and other loyal Caribbean colonies. At the same time, however, they secretly sold the South American rebels weapons from federal armories in New England. Furthermore, like good businessmen hedging their bets, these northern merchants sold a smaller amount of weapons and other supplies to the Spanish royalists. Monroe and Adams, under the sway of northern merchants, countenanced only this assistance, because anything public would threaten Florida negotiations.

With Monroe and Adams running the executive branch, the government championed their doctrine instead of Clay’s—the US kept its mind off South America so long as Florida remained in Spanish hands. Or, even in the Indians’ hands—Adams wanted the US to acquire Florida at all costs. After openly defending another secret invasion of the peninsula, the secretary accomplished his coveted goal in the 1819 Adams-Onís Treaty. In the process, he secured massive subsidies for his crucial political supporters, the Boston Associates.

After the war, Adams encouraged encroaching on southwestern Indian lands. Admittedly, most natives failed to homestead the land they claimed ownership over. For example, the Cherokee and Creek hunters required two thousand acres per person for food while the average American farmer needed only two acres. Indians also failed to conserve the hunt, clinging to a mystical theory of reincarnation where Mother Nature magically regrew the dead. Understandably, as Adams remarked in 1802, “What is the right of huntsman to the forest of a thousand miles, over which he has accidentally ranged in quest of prey?” Regardless, Americans aggravated relations by coercively imposing land cessions. General Andrew Jackson, now tasked with negotiations, was a perennial agitator. He genuinely cared about Indian welfare, even adopting an Indian child. But, like virtually all other Americans, Jackson harshly relegated the Indians to a secondary status: white settlers always came first. In response to frontier strife, in 1817 Jackson retaliated on the Seminoles in southern Georgia. Monroe and Secretary Calhoun gave him vague approval to pursue the Indians in Spanish Florida. Jackson seized the bait, expanding the First Seminole War by invading Spanish Florida.

In Monroe’s cabinet, only Adams defended the general’s controversial actions. The secretary declared that Spain’s lack of control over Florida’s “savages” justified the invasion, which constituted “neither war against Spain nor violation of the Constitution.” Clearly, he wanted Jackson’s bravado to demonstrate US power for Florida negotiations. Spain relented, allowing Adams and Spanish Minister Onís to sign a treaty in February 1819. After many years of chomping at the bit, the United States now controlled all of Florida. Indians in the Southwest nervously awaited their fate, and the Monroe and Adams administrations agreed to demands of Jacksonians in Georgia that they had to leave.

The Treaty led to sizable benefits for the secretary’s merchant allies. First, in return for ceding any claim to Texas, Spain reneged all claims to the Pacific Northwest, thereby expanding the US’ domain to the West Coast. Now only vague British and Russian claims stood in the way. Boston Associates who conducted trade with China and wanted a US port on the Pacific, especially Perkins, lauded the acquisition. So did Chief Justice Marshall and SBUS President Biddle, who wanted the United States to control the continent.

Second, the federal government assumed $5 million in American merchant losses against Spanish seizures of goods and ships that had occurred since the 1790s. According to Carl Prince and Seth Taylor, this bailout “marked unprecedented American underwriting of private commercial losses, losses traditionally treated as hazards of free enterprise in a world of competitive nations.” The recipient merchants and insurance companies based their operations in the North: New England received $1.8 million, Philadelphia $1.3 million, New York less than $1 million, Baltimore $600,000, and the South just $300,000. As expected, the Boston Associates and their affiliate Boston Marine Insurance Company and Massachusetts Fire and Marine Insurance Company led the pack, securing $1 million, far more than their rivals.

The basic reason for the Boston Associates’ success was simple. First, as an eager Adams explained to Perkins, “every attention will be paid to your claim. . . . It would be peculiarly grateful to me to be instrumental in arriving at this result.” Second, William King—brother of arch-Federalist Rufus King, first governor of Maine, and real estate partner of senator and Boston Associate affiliate Harrison Gray Otis— sat on the three-man Spanish Claims Commission. Third, Webster, who declared to Boston Associate Peter C. Brooks that the Treaty would enrich “the Insurance Offices in Boston,” filed the Associates’ losses before the commission.

Adams and Webster profited immensely. Perkins, who received a hefty $132,000 bailout, supported Adams in his successful 1824 presidential run. Webster received a 5 percent cut for his legal work, boasting that the merchant payout “occasioned the Treaty.” Historians Prince and Taylor emphasize that Webster “demonstrates his real significance in forging a Hamiltonian partnership between government and industry . . . divert[ing] public money in large sums to Associate-related coffers at a critical time in the expansion of the Bostonians’ industrial empire.” The Adams-Onís Treaty provides a signature example of the Era of Corruption’s cronyism, illustrating how businesses and politicians jointly profited at taxpayer expense.

Once Monroe and Adams acquired Florida, they swung their support to Clay’s system. Unsurprisingly, the main objective of new diplomatic missions, which the secretary of state emphasized as “deserving of particular attention,” was to secure favorable trade deals. In Adams’ words, “as navigators and manufacturers, we are already so far advanced in a career upon which they are yet to enter, that we may, for many years . . . maintain with them a commercial intercourse.” Many of the diplomats partnered with American businessmen, such as Boston Associate affiliate John Murray Forbes, stationed in Argentina. Consequently, the emissaries tried to secure preferential treatment instead of free trade arrangements. For example, William Tudor, a Bostonian-appointed consul to Peru, lobbied the government to only lower the tariff on cloth made by power looms, which the Boston Associates monopolized through patent laws. Rhode Island merchant Edwin T. Jenckes stationed allies in Chile so they could persuade local politicians to levy discriminatory tariffs on British products. In Mexico, Minister Joel R. Poinsett coaxed the government to grant the US most-favored-nation status.

Adams and Clay’s plans for quasi-colonization received a major boost in Monroe’s “Doctrine” of December 1823, a response to exaggerated threats of new European interventions in South America. William Appleman Williams appropriately calls the Monroe Doctrine “the Manifesto of the American Empire,” and Murray Rothbard argues it “launch[ed] the career of American imperialism in Latin America.” Essentially, Monroe declared that the European powers could not create new colonies in North or South America, or risk insulting the US. In return, the US would not interfere in European wars. Translation: “Europe must stay on their turf so we can take ours.” This aggrandizement of the whole Western Hemisphere shocked Europeans. Monroe did not help matters by concurrently advocating higher tariffs on European products and meddling in a foreign war by praising Greek resistance against Turkey.

Adams played a major role in shaping the Monroe Doctrine to make sure the British stayed out of Spanish Cuba, his new conquest. Earlier in the year, he wrote to the US minister in Spain, Hugh Nelson, that “the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself. . . . You will not conceal from the Spanish Government the repugnance of the United States to the transfer of the island of Cuba to any other power.” The secretary of state wanted both Spain and Great Britain to realize that Cuba was the next course in the United States’ dinner.

Unfortunately, one loophole could cripple Adams’ doctrine: nothing prevented Mexico or Colombia from taking the island. This would remove Cuba from Spanish hands and make it harder for the US to acquire. Even worse, Cuba might independently revolt from its new master, opening the door for the British to protect their Caribbean interests. This fear, which reached a fever pitch in 1825, worried the new President Adams and Secretary of State Clay. The administration knew that invoking the Monroe Doctrine against an independent American nation was simply too aggressive, so it first tried thinly veiled threats against the US’ southern neighbors.

Clay wrote to Minister Poinsett stating, that if Spain lost control of Cuba, the island “should be attached to the United States.” Poinsett dutifully relayed the information and astonishingly informed the British Minister to Mexico that “the United States were the head of the American powers,” implying an informal confederation. Adams and Clay also audaciously authorized Poinsett to purchase Texas for $1 million from Mexico, instructing him to use the insulting argument that a Texas cession would position their capital in the center of the country. Unsurprisingly, the diplomat could not make any progress on the subject. The US Ambassador in Colombia, Richard Anderson, issued a similar warning about Cuba.

Next came the Europeans. Clay wrote to James Brown, the minister to France and a family relative, that the US would never allow “any other power than Spain under any contingency whatsoever” to control Cuba. Ambassador to Spain Alexander Everett, Congressman Edward Everett’s brother, even ridiculously suggested to the Spanish secretary of state that the country mortgage Cuba to the tune of $15 to $20 million for US protection, a proposal that Everett confidentially believed would lead to “the eventual acquisition of the entire sovereignty.”

It turned out that Adams and Clay vastly overestimated the aggressiveness of Mexico and Colombia, who preferred to discuss Cuba at the upcoming Panama Congress. Adams and Clay leapt at the opportunity, rashly agreeing to attend before informing Congress. Besides the Cuba question, the two desperately wanted to secure approval for a US canal through the Isthmus of Panama. In December 1825, Adams sent a message to the Senate nominating two delegates, and the upper chamber debated the matter the following year.

This time, Adams and Clay overextended themselves because of the emerging Jacksonian coalition. When analyzing the congressional debates, historians unduly focus on how southern Jacksonians fretted over the new countries having freed their slaves. This was in large part due to Senator John Randolph, who seethed at Adams and Clay’s recent corrupt bargain for the presidency. Although describing slavery as a “cancer” and a “disease,” Randolph engaged in hyperbole, insisting that the Panama Congress would liberate Cuba, emancipate the slaves, and attack Florida to encourage domestic slave revolts. Once again, Randolph was not actually worried about the threat—in the same year he privately lamented slavery and relations with the Indians. But his tactic succeeded in alarming some southern congressmen. What is usually neglected, however, is that Clay and Hezekiah Niles insisted that slave owners should actually support attendance precisely to prevent a South American takeover of Cuba. Contrary to common belief, Caitlin Fitz argues Adams “intended to protect slavery by sending delegates to Panama.”

While the slavery controversy boded ominously for the future, Jeffrey Malanson stresses that it was only one of many issues the Senate debated and that “the fundamental principles of US foreign policy,” particularly noninterventionism versus activism, “truly stands out as being of the greatest significance.” The Jacksonian critics, particularly Senator Van Buren, genuinely worried about the constitutionality of the president’s actions and the precedent attendance would establish. Although many Jacksonians maintained expansionist views regarding Texas, they refused to meddle in the affairs of other countries. Even the militaristic Jackson displayed a genuine concern over entangling alliances, writing that if “we engage in confederations, or alliances with any nation, we may from that time date the down fall of our republic” because such actions could “lead to War.” Congressional Jacksonians did not hesitate to criticize the American System’s “domestic policy” of “restriction and Monopoly” and its “foreign policy” of “‘entangling alliances.’” The direction of US foreign policy remained the primary issue of contention, and the Jacksonians wanted to take a stand.

In the end, the Jacksonians lacked the political strength to stop the mission. But the entire Panama Congress turned into a fiasco. Only a handful of countries sent delegates on time, and one US delegate arrived late while the other died en route. Although their plans failed, Adams and Clay continued to eye Cuba. In 1827, Clay sent Daniel Cook of Illinois, a lame-duck congressman crucial in securing Adams’ House election, on a secret Cuba mission to report any suspicious activity. In Spain, Everett notified the authorities that if British subjects remained in Cuba, the Adams administration might “aid the King” by invading the island. But for the time being, crucial setbacks postponed the Cuba acquisition.

Although the Jacksonians failed to stop the mission, they grew stronger by the year, causing Adams and Clay to increasingly focus on securing reelection in 1828. The crucial catalyst for the emerging reform party occurred in early 1825, when Clay helped Adams win the presidency in return for the top spot eight years down the road.

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James Banner, To the Hartford Convention (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), pp. 105–07; George Dangerfield, The Awakening of American Nationalism (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), pp. 131–32, 139–40; Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 1 (New York: Viking Press, 1946), p. 401; Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, DC: 1960), pp. 11–12; Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2002), pp. 26–27, 37–60; Grover Moore, The Missouri Controversy (Lexington: The University of Kentucky Press, 1953), pp. 25–27, 30, 236, 301–05, 321–25; Donald Ratcliffe, The One-Party Presidential Contest (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2015), pp. 53–54.

Andrew Browning, The Panic of 1819 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2019), pp. 336.

William Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour in Jacksonian America (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2016), pp. 86–88; Browning, Panic of 1819, pp. 334–38, 348; Moore, Missouri Controversy, pp. 18–19, 32–33, 170–73, 320–30.

Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, p. 104.

Joel Silbey, Martin Van Buren and the Emergence of American Popular Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002), p. 42.

Robert Remini, Henry Clay (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991), p. 182.

Daniel Howe, What Hath God Wrought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 153; Shaw Livermore, The Twilight of Federalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 88–97; Moore, Missouri Controversy, pp. 86–103, 273–81; Andrew P. Napolitano, Dred Scott’s Revenge (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2009), pp. 54–57.

Belko, Philip Pendleton Barbour, p. 14. See also pp. 12, 14, 98–102.

Browning, Panic of 1819, p. 333.

Adam Tate, Conservatism and Southern Intellectuals (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005), p. 74.

Browning, Panic of 1819, pp. 332–33; Tate, Southern Intellectuals, pp. 73–75.

Norman Risjord, Chesapeake Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 215–16.

Tate, Southern Intellectuals, p. 71. See also Moore, Missouri Controversy, pp. 96, 124–25; Nicholas Wood, “John Randolph of Roanoke and the Politics of Slavery in the Early Republic,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Summer 2012): 118–19, 122–28.

Richard Ellis, The Union at Risk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 193.

Moore, Missouri Controversy, pp. 125–26, 307–08.

Randolph Campbell, “The Spanish American Aspect of Henry Clay’s American System,” The Americas (July 1967): 8.

Campbell, “Clay’s American System,” pp. 6–7, 13–14; Dorfman, Economic Mind, 1, p. 390; Caitlan Fitz, Our Sister Republics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), pp. 183–84; William Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992), pp. 91–94; William Williams, The Contours of American History (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Company, 1961), p. 221.

Fitz, Sister Republics, pp. 130–31, 160–68, 171, 181, 184–86, 306–07; Lindsay Regele, Manufacturing Advantage (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), pp. 117–23.

Stanley Lebergott, The Americans (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1984), p. 18.

Shepard Krech, The Ecological Indian (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999), pp. 151–71; Lebergott, Americans, pp. 13–18; Walter Nugent, Habits of Empire (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), pp. 121–23; Robert Remini, Andrew Jackson and His Indian Wars (New York: Penguin Books, 2001), pp. 64–69, 214–15.

Robert Remini, John Quincy Adams (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), p. 55.

Nugent, Habits of Empire, pp. 123–27; Remini, John Quincy Adams, pp. 54–55, 90–100; Norman Risjord, The Old Republicans (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 188–90.

Thomas Govan, Nicholas Biddle (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 53–56; Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, p. 72; Nugent, Habits of Empire, pp. 127, 160–63; Lindsay Schakenbach, “From Discontented Bostonians to Patriotic Industrialists,” The New England Quarterly (September 2011): 395–96; Weeks, American Global Empire, pp. 51–52, 80, 178.

Carl Prince and Seth Taylor, “Daniel Webster, the Boston Associates, and the U.S. Government’s Role in the Industrializing Process,” Journal of the Early Republic (Autumn 1982): 298.

Schakenbach, “Discontented Bostonians,” p. 392.

Ibid., p. 388.

Ibid., p. 390.

Prince and Taylor, “Daniel Webster,” p. 297.

Ibid., pp. 293–98; Regele, Manufacturing Advantage, pp. 91–94, 98, 218–19; Schakenbach, “Discontented Bostonians,” pp. 385–86, 388–95, 399.

Williams, Contours of American History, p. 217.

Ibid., p. 218.

Campbell, “Clay’s American System,” pp. 10–11; Regele, Manufacturing Advantage, pp. 123–29, 229.

Murray N. Rothbard, “Report on George B. DeHuszar and Thomas Hulbert Stevenson, A History of the American Republic, 2 vols,” in Rothbard, Strictly Confidential, ed. David Gordon (Auburn, AL: Mises Institute, 2010), p. 116, and Williams, Contours of American History, p. 215.

Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, p. 169.

Ibid., pp. 161–94; Fitz, Sister Republics, p. 158; David Johnson, John Randolph of Roanoke (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012), pp. 193–95; Williams, Contours of American History, pp. 215–18.

Samuel Bemis, John Quincy Adams and the Foundations of American Foreign Policy (Norwalk, CT: The Easton Press, 1987), p. 539.

Bemis, John Quincy Adams, p. 548.

Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, p. 247.

Bemis, John Quincy Adams, p. 542. See also pp. 154, 540, 542; Philip Burch, Elites in American History, vol. 1 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1981), p. 124; Glenn Price, Origins of the War with Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), pp. 16–18; Remini, John Quincy Adams, p. 103.

Wood, “John Randolph,” p. 131.

Fitz, Sister Republics, p. 215. See also John Belohlavek, “Let the Eagle Soar!” (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985), pp. 238–40; Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, pp. 248–53; Fitz, Sister Republics, pp. 214–16, 221; Jeffrey Malanson, “The Congressional Debate Over U.S. Participation in the Congress of Panama,” Diplomatic History (November 2006): 819–21; Wood, “John Randolph,” pp. 131–33.

Malanson, “Congressional Debate,” p. 814.

Fitz, Sister Republics, p. 206.

Campbell, “Clay’s American System,” p. 12.

Bemis, John Quincy Adams, p. 543.

Ibid., pp. 541–44; Dangerfield, Awakening of American Nationalism, p. 253; Malanson, “Congressional Debate,” pp. 821–25, 834; Robert Remini, Martin Van Buren and the Making of the Democratic Party (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 104–16.