Discovering the Decades: 1820s
Points in Time
- 1820: Missouri Compromise; New York is largest American city; only six percent of Americans live in cities
- 1821: Santa Fe Trail opened; American Colonization Society establishes African colony of Liberia; Saturday Evening Post founded
- 1821-1826: U.S. recognizes republican governments in Spain’s former Latin American colonies
- 1821-1827: Half of the decade’s annual best selling books are novels by James Fenimore Cooper, including three of his “Leatherstocking Tales”
- 1822: Planned slave revolt crushed in Charleston
- 1823: Monroe Doctrine declared
- 1824: Henry Clay defends higher tariff protection and funding for internal improvements to develop American economy; policy of Indian removal from the East begins about this time; beginning of religious revival movement known as the Great Awakening and schisms within established churches
- 1825: Erie Canal opens
- 1826: Internal combustion engine patented
- 1828: Highest U.S. tariff duties yet: John Calhoun writes treatise on state nullification of federal laws; C & O Canal begins construction; B & O Railroad chartered; Audubon publishes first volume of Birds of America
- 1829: Andrew Jackson inaugurated as President and introduces “spoils system” on an unprecedented level
The early 1820s were a period of relative peace at home, the "Era of Good Feelings." Perhaps the greatest U.S. foreign policy initiative was the opening of relations with Spain's former American colonies and the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, a toothless warning to Europe that the New World was to be off limits to future colonization.
Meanwhile, the seeds of future upheavals were being planted. The organization of the work place was rapidly shifting from a home/shop environment to one of "operatives" in a mechanized factory setting. Among the political and social consequences, were the formation of unions and the indirect encouragement of numerous religious revivals, sometimes known as the "Second Great Awakening." Kentucky Senator Henry Clay advocated high tariffs to protect America's young industries, while South Carolinian John C. Calhoun decried the tariff as unfair to the agrarian South, importers of finished goods. The "Tariff of Abominations" of 1828, passed largely due to a miscalculation by Andrew Jackson supporters in Congress, was answered by a Calhoun treatise which put forward the doctrine of state nullification of federal laws and helped set the stage for the Southern secession to come.
Also foreshadowing the conflict of mid century, of course, was the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The facile trade-off admission of Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state would not be possible in the aftermath of the Mexican War of the 1840s and would lead to virtual civil war in Kansas and a true Civil War that would rock the nation.
Even in Virginia, there were diverse opinions about slavery at this time. Opposition to slavery in the North began to make slave holders more defensive and intransigent. But segments of Alexandria society vigorously opposed slavery as a terrible blight upon society. Most, however, saw no solution but to return blacks to Africa and, in 1823, organized a local chapter of the American Colonization Society to raise funds to resettle African Americans in Liberia. Although this seems now to have been hopelessly unrealistic, many people worked tirelessly to ruin the institution of slavery-before the experiences of the next three decades destroyed all hopes.
In 1820 Alexandria, D.C. was a town of 8,218 inhabitants of whom 5,515 were white and 2,603 were African American, including 1,168 free blacks and 1,435 slaves. Visitors’ accounts vividly describe the town.
Females amongst them uncommonly intelligent, uncommonly courteous and polite in their behaviour with each other and especially with strangers. Polite and courteous conduct of the youth of Alexandria does much credit to parents, to the teachers, to the clergy and to human nature itself. Again the inhabitants of this town are uncommonly industrious, uncommonly mora