legislature solemnly pledging never to enact laws depriving any citizen of his rights under the
US Constitution (February 1821). As a result President Monroe was able to sign Missouri's
admission to the Union in August. This was the first of three compromises Clay brokered (the
others were 1833 and 1850) which defused the periodic explosion between North and South and
postponed the Civil War for forty years. Indeed Senator Henry S. Foote, who had watched Clay
weave his magic spells to disarm the angry protagonists in Congress, later said: `Had there been
one such man in the Congress of the United States as Henry Clay in 1860-1, there would, I am
sure, have been no Civil War.'
Clay followed up the Missouri Compromises by encouraging President Monroe to play a positive
part in the liberation struggle against Spain in Latin America by giving the revolutionary
governments rapid recognition and any diplomatic help they needed. That, too, was part of the
American System, in which the United States not only made itself strong and independent in the
north, but excluded the rapacious European powers from the center and the south. What Clay did
not know was the extent to which the British Foreign Secretary, George Canning, also an
enthusiastic supporter of Latin American independence (for British commercial purposes), was
pushing Monroe to take the same line and to declare openly that France and Spain were no
longer welcome in the hemisphere. On December 2, 1823, as part of his message to Congress,
Monroe announced the new American policy. First, the United States would not interfere in
existing European colonies. Second, it would keep out of Europe, its alliances and wars. Third,
the American continents ... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation by the European powers.' Fourth, the political systems of Europe being different to that of the United States, it wouldconsider any attempt on their part to extend their system to
any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety.' This declaration, which in
time was known as the Monroe Doctrine, became progressively more important as America-
thanks to Clay's American System-acquired the industrial and military muscle to enforce it.
In the light of his successful supra-party activities, Clay believed he had earned the right to be
president. But then so did many other people. The Monroe presidency has been described, at the
time and since, as the `Era of Good Feelings,' the last time in American history when the
government of the country was not envenomed by party politics. But a case can also be made for
describing the Monroe presidency, and the rule of John Quincy Adams which formed its
appendage, as the first great era of corruption in American politics. Many Americans came
seriously to believe, during it, that their government, both administration and Congress, was
corrupt, and this at a time when in Britain the traditional corruption of the 18th-century system
was being slowly but surely extruded. By corruption, Americans of the 1820s did not simply
mean bribes and stealing from the public purse. They also meant the undermining of
constitutional integrity by secret deals, the use of public office to acquire power or higher office,
and the giving of private interests priority over public welfare. But the public thought that plenty
of simple thieving was going on too. Indeed, two members of the government, Calhoun at the
War Department, and William Crawford (1772-1834), the Treasury Secretary, more or less
openly accused each other of tolerating, if not actually profiting from, skulduggery in their
departments.
The atmosphere in Monroe's administation during its last years was poisonous, not least
because Calhoun, Crawford, and Adams, its three principal members, were all maneuvering to
succeed their boss. As a consequence there was particular bitterness over patronage and
appointments. Adams' diary records a ferocious quarrel between Crawford and Monroe on