1800’s Era of Good Feelings Essay

Although many seemingly happy events such as the â€Å"Era of Good Feelings† and the granting of universal white manhood suffrage occurred during the early 1800’s, the statement that nationalism and not the fear of sectionalism caused westward expansion is an invalid statement. Westward expansion was truly an effect of a growing sectionalism in the country originating from events such as the Tariff of 1828 , the National Bank, and the Missouri Compromise. Preceding the Missouri Compromise was the Tallmadge amendment. When the Tallmadge amendment was passed, the South was infuriated. The amendment decreed that the slave state of Missouri had to gradually free all of their slaves and prohibited any more slaves to be brought into Missouri before they could be admitted into the Union. See more: Homelessness as a social problem Essay This made slave-owning Southerners upset because they viewed the amendment as a threat to sectional equality and balance. With the South suspicious of the North trying to ban slavery and the North suspicious of the South trying to expand slavery, both sides naturally flocked to the West in order to gain another slave or free state to tip the balance of power in their direction. Even in the Florida Purchase Treaty of 1819, after war hero Andrew Jackson exceeded his orders from the White House and tore through Florida, motives for acquiring new land seemed to continually hint towards the growing sectionalism and concern about the issue of slavery. Also, the uneasy Missouri Compromise gave both North and South even more reason to expand westward. The Missouri Compromise established Missouri as a unrestricted slave state which gave abolitionists and Northerners great concern about the spread of slavery while the establishment of the Missouri Compromise line that prohibited slavery above it caused Southerners to worry about slavery too. All the suspicions and fears of the two sections resulted in a fast and furious expansionism in the west. Then, during the presidency of John Quincy Adams, his nationalistic policies of roads and canals laid a heavy financial burden upon the federal government requiring the continuation of the tariff which caused tension among the South. The National Bank, although established by the nationalist Alexander Hamilton, played a big role in sectionalism in the United States. When the Bank of the United States irresponsibly overspeculated in the West, the financial crisis of 1819 arose in which many western banks were shut down and had to foreclose mortgages on numerous farms in the West. The foreclosure of farms in the West made the National Bank extremely unpopular in the West and fueled western sectionalism, pushing western farmers to lean towards the slave-owning Southerners in the battle for influence in the West. In addition to these events, the Tariff of 1828 made Southerners angry yet again and widened the rift between the North and South even more. The extremely high tariff was not for revenue but rather for the purpose of protecting American manufacturing. This made the Southerners upset because it showed partiality to the northern factories and hurt the southern farmers who were large consumers of manufactured goods. The hated tariff would then prompt South Carolina to take action and bring out the old Kentucky and Virginia resolutions to nullify the tariff. Thus, these two events added to the worries of both sides and to the westward expansion fever.