HTY 277

Politics of the Early Republic: The Law

The Midnight Commissions
        Marbury v Madison
Transcript of Marbury v_ Madison (1803) (print-friendly version).htm

Fletcher v Peck, 1810

In 1795, the Georgia state legislature passed a land grant awarding territory to four companies. The following year, however, the legislature voided the law and declared all rights and claims under it to be invalid. In 1800, John Peck acquired land that was part of the original legislative grant. He then sold the land to Robert Fletcher three years later, claiming that past sales of the land had been legitimate. Fletcher argued that since the original sale of the land had been declared invalid, Peck had no legal right to sell the land and thus committed a breach of contract.

Question: Could the contract between Fletcher and Peck be invalidated by an act of the Georgia legislature?

Conclusion:  In a unanimous opinion, the Court held that since the estate had been legally "passed into the hands of a purchaser for a valuable consideration," the Georgia legislature could not take away the land or invalidate the contract. Noting that the Constitution did not permit bills of attainder or ex post facto laws, the Court held that laws annulling contracts or grants made by previous legislative acts were constitutionally impermissible.

Dartmouth College v Woodward,1819.
Dartmouth College v_ Woodward.htm
Marshall rules on sanctity of contract, denying the state of New Hampshire the right to transform a private corporation (Dartmouth College) into a state university.  The implication was that once issued, a charter or incorporation could not be subsequently altered.

 McCulloch v Maryland, 1819 Transcript of McCulloch v_ Maryland (1819) (print-friendly version).htm
The issue was whether the state of Maryland could tax the Baltimore branch of the Bank of the United States, a national corporation.  The first of the two issues considered was whether Congress had the power to charter a national bank.  While the Constitution made no specific reference, Marshall articulated the doctrine of implied powers.   The second issue was whether a state could tax an agency of the federal government.  Marshall argued that any power of the national government was supreme and states could not interfere with the exercise of federal powers.

Gibbons v Ogden, 1824
Gibbons v_ Ogden.htm
A fight between rival steamboat operators.  Since 1807 Robert Livingston and Robert Fulton enjoyed a monopoly from NY legislature to operate the NY-NJ ferry.  Marshall ruled that Congress had the power to regulate interstate commerce and thus navigation.

Charles River Bridge v Warren Bridge, 1835
Proprietors of Charles River Bridge v_ Proprietors of Warren Bridge.htm
A case over the exclusivity of a charter.  Justice Taney argued for progress by denying the rights of charters to impede improvements in the interest of the convenience or encroach on the rights and liberties of the public.

 

 

Politics of the Early Republic: Jackson's Rise to National Prominence

 

He was the first man elected from Tennessee to the House of Representatives, and he served briefly in the Senate (at age 30).

The Creation of ‘Old Hickory’

Jackson's military career, which had begun in the Revolution, continued in 1802 when he was elected major general of the Tennessee militia. Ten years later Tennessee Governor Willie Blount (of the North Carolina Blount family) gave him the rank of major general of U.S. forces. In 1814, after several devastating campaigns against Native Americans in the Creek War, he was finally promoted to major general in the regular army. Jackson also later led troops during the First Seminole War in Florida. General Jackson emerged a national hero from the War of 1812, primarily because of his decisive defeat of the British at the Battle of New Orleans. It was during this period he earned his nickname of "Old Hickory." Jackson had been ordered to march his Tennessee troops to Natchez, Mississippi. When he got there he was told to disband his men because they were unneeded. General Jackson refused and marched them back to Tennessee. Because of his strict discipline on that march his men began to say he was as tough as hickory and the nickname stuck. (State Library of North Carolina)

 

The Chesapeake

The issue of impressment: During the Napoleonic Wars British ships routinely impressed sailors from American vessels, to the tune of some 5-9 thousand. Some were probably British deserters, but many were American. Britain did not recognize naturalized Americans, i.e. anyone born in Britain was subject to service in HMRN.

June 1807, Norfolk, VA. the USS Chesapeake embarked for the Mediterranean on patrol. She was intercepted by the HMS Leopard. The Leopard called for the Chesapeake to submit to a search, in violation of international rules of the sea, and when she refused, the British fired a broadside forcing the Americans to capitulate. Three Americans were killed, eighteen more wounded, many seriously. Four men were taken off the Chesapeake by the British.

The outcome was to unify American outrage at Britain, and President Jefferson introduced his ban on British vessels in American harbors (Embargo)

1. Embargo: Napoleon's Continental System (beginning 1806) and the British Orders in Council (1807) established embargoes that made international trade precarious. American President Thomas Jefferson responded with the Embargo Act of 1807, which prohibited American ships from sailing to any foreign ports and closed American ports to British ships. Jefferson's embargo was especially unpopular in New England, where merchants preferred the indignities of impressment to the halting of overseas commerce.

2. Non-Intercourse: The Embargo Act had no effect on Great Britain and France, and was replaced by the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, which lifted all embargoes on American shipping except for those bound for British or French ports. This proved to be unenforceable.

3. Macon's Bill Number 2. This lifted all embargoes, but offered that if either France or Great Britain were to cease their interference with American shipping, the United States would reinstate an embargo on the other nation. Napoleon, seeing an opportunity to make trouble for Great Britain, promised to leave American ships alone. He had no intention of honoring this promise, but the ruse de guerre worked, and the United States reinstated the embargo with Great Britain and moved closer to declaring war.

4. Warhawks: Henry Clay (KY), Richard Johnson (KY), Felix Grundy (TN), John C. Calhoun (SC), Geroge Troup (GA), Peter Porter (NY), William Henry Harrison (Governor IL Territory). Young turks in the Twelfth Congress (1811-1813). The War Hawks advocated going to war against Great Britain for a variety of reasons, mostly related to the interference of the Royal Navy in American shipping, which the War Hawks believed hurt the American economy and injured American prestige. War Hawks from the western states also believed that the British were instigating Native Americans on the frontier to attack American settlements, and so they called for an invasion of British North America to end this threat. Clay speech 1811.

War of 1812 (June 18, 1812)

Thomas Jefferson: "The acquisition of Canada, this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent." (Jefferson to William Duane, August 4, 1812)

The second "War of Independence" was really three wars: on Indians, to annex Canada, and to assert America's rights at sea.

  

War on Indians

Tippecanoe (1811) to the Thames (Harrison)

Red Sticks to Horseshoe Bend (1814) (Jackson)

War on Canada

St Lawrence/Lake Champlain

Great Lakes: Niagra to Detroit (William Hull) ; Burning York

British siezure of Maine from Penobscot Bay eastward.

Chesapeake: Burning of Washington          

Baltimore: Francis Scott Key on observing the bombardment of Ft McHenry (1814)

War at Sea

The Constitution. Issac Hull took on the British ship-of-the-line Guerriere in 1812:

Privateers also were effective.

The Chesapeake was lost in 1813.

British blockade blankets entire American coast; beginning in South Carolina and Georgia, and extending the blockade to the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. By the end of 1813 the British blockade extended to all southern and mid-Atlantic states. By spring of 1814, the British blockade blanketed New England. That led to action from New England (until then N.E. merchants had profitted from the war)

Dissent:

The Hartford Convention, The Demise of the Federalists

Peace

Treaty of Ghent (December 1814)

Jackson at New Orleans

 

 

 

The Florida Campaign, 1817-18: First Seminole War

Osceola                                     Abraham

Testing the restraints of authority

From Era of Good Feelings to the Panic of 1819

Madison and Monroe: National Republicans/Jeffersonian Republicans

The Panic of 1819 (See Wilentz)

Missouri Compromise

Southern View

Monroe Doctrine

The Election of 1824   See electoral map

All his life Jackson was a loyal friend and a fierce enemy. This was never more true than during his years in politics at the national level beginning with the 1824 presidential election. Canes, hats, brooms and buttons all surfaced bearing Jackson’s image or the image of a hickory tree. The election of 1824 permanently established Old Hickory as a myth-like outsider, diametrically opposed to bureaucracy with a life-long adversarial relationship to the federal government and the upper classes in power. At least, that was the image that he fed to the public.

Jacksonians often referred to the 1824 election as the "Stolen Election" because while Jackson swept the popular vote hands down, he did not have enough electoral votes to automatically win the presidency. Because he did not procure a majority, the election was thrown into Congress (House of Representatives), which awarded the Presidency to John Quincy Adams.

Jackson's opponents were Henry Clay of Kentucky, John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, and William H. Crawford of Georgia who were respectively speaker of the house, secretary of state, and secretary of the treasury. Adams was horrified at the thought of Jackson becoming president. The patrician New Englander thought this parvenu from the west was a badly educated bumpkin with little preparation for high office. Because Clay's opinion of Jackson was similar, the Kentuckian threw his support to Adams on the first ballot and Adams was elected. Jackson never forgave either one of them, especially after Adams named Clay his secretary of state in what seemed to be a payoff for Clay's votes (State Library of North Carolina).

Rather than be victimized, he called out for a revolution of the people, a democratic movement on the farm. He said people should elect the President, not Congress, and he claimed he was the man for the job. Four years later, he rode a wave of popular support into the highest office in the land.