This essay will cover the broad changes in the newly-born state after the American Revolution. The aim is to trace the major political, economic, and social changes that determined the further evolution of the nation. The critical junctures throughout the period from the 1790s to the 1840s will be outlined to justify the position. Over this period, the idea of fiscal decentralization prevailed over the powerful agency of the Bank, the party system underwent fundamental changes, and the slavery question became the integral reason for the political division between North and South.
In the 1940s, the federal authorities decided to diminish the powers of the Bank of the US heavily altering the federal government’s role in the economy. Initially, when the US Bank was created in 1791 under the presidency of Alexander Hamilton, it divided political elites, with Thomas Jefferson and James Maddison being the main opponents.1 Hamilton claimed that this decision would extend the active capital of the country and serve as an engine of business2. At the same time, Jefferson thought this decision was unconstitutional and heavily expanded the fiscal and monetary system of the federal government.3 However, in the 1830s, it became clear that the Bank caused inequality and unnecessary centralization, so Andrew Jackson decided to reconsider its authority and delegate banking powers to the state banks.4 Summing up the general trend, although the Bank War in the 1930s caused severe economic problems, it greatly influenced a more inclusive understanding of democratic values.
The most notable political change in 50 years has been the decline of the Federalist Party and the rise of the Democratic Party. Wood (2011) conceptualized the thinking of Federalists in the 1790s as striving to adopt some effective traits of British monarchy into the republican framework of the new country.5 The greatest harm to the reputation of Federalists was the adoption of the so-called Alien and Sedition Acts, which suppressed freedom of speech and damaged the US image of asylum for the oppressed of the world.6 Jefferson’s landslide victory in 1804 over Charles Pinckney ended Federalists’ desires to oppose Democrats.7 Only in 1834 an anti-Jackson coalition of people with relatively different political values was formed under the Whig party, which, in fact, was not the direct successor of the Federalist party.8 As a result, the Whig Party eventually acquired presidential power in 1840 but did not use anti-slavery rhetoric to attract swing voters.
Lastly, the greatest social issue that experienced a transformation over fifty years was the question of slavery. After the American Revolution, the northern states became free, where condemnation of tyranny and celebration of universal rights strengthened opposition to slavery.9 As for southern states, their residents, being strikingly against abolishment, protected what they considered their private property. The first milestone was the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807, which restricted bringing newly enslaved people into the US with the intent to hold, sell, or dispose of them.10 Another critical point was the Missouri Compromise, under which the state of Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and the state of Maine as a free state.11 Such a compromise exacerbated the confrontation between North and South on the question of slavery but seemed to delay the outbreak of the Civil War.
To conclude, this essay traced the differences between the context of the 1790s and 1840s by observing the key historical events and major processes. In fact, the mentioned events determined the path dependency of the US, which inevitably moved the country to the Civil War. From such a perspective, one may see the clear polarization in the economic, political, and social changes between different worldviews and opinions.
Bibliography
Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, 1808.
“Alexander Hamilton’s Final Version of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, [5 December 1791],” National Archives. Web.
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.
Burstein, Andrew. The Passions of Andrew Jackson. New York: Knopf, 2003.
Locke, Joseph L., and Ben Wright. The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook, Vol. 1: To 1877. Stanford University Press, 2019.
Wood, Gordon S. Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815. Oxford University Press, 2011.
Footnotes
- Joseph Locke and Ben Wright, The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open US History Textbook, Vol. 1: To 1877 (Stanford University Press, 2019), 153.
- “Alexander Hamilton’s Final Version of the Report on the Subject of Manufactures, [5 December 1791],” National Archives. Web.
- Locke and Wright, “The American Yawp,” 153.
- Michel Chevalier and Andrew Jackson, quoted in Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Knopf, 2003), 200.
- Gordon Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 ( Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 54.
- Wood, 248.
- Wood, 312.
- Locke and Wright, “The American Yawp,” 242.
- Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 229.
- Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves, 1808.
- Locke and Wright, “The American Yawp,” 230.