National Growing PainsNational Growing Pains 7

CONTENTS

■Hail, Bright Aurora(c. 1815), a painting by an unknown artist. Aurora, the

goddess of dawn, represents the ascent of the American nation. The metaphor

may have come from the poem, “An Hymn to the Morning,” by Phyllis

Wheatley, a black slave: “Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies / Which deck

thy progress through the vaulted skies.”

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much income. In 1809 its total revenue fell short of $8 mil-

lion. Of that, $7 million came from taxes on imports (the

tariff); the balance came mostly from the sale of federal

lands and postage stamps. Without income from the tar-

iff, the federal government could have done little more

than deliver the mail.

From 1809 to 1828, Americans repeatedly expanded

the role of the federal government. Armies and navies

were raised to subdue the Indians and defend the nation

from European predators; highways were built to

encourage trade and promote settlement of the

Louisiana territories. The federal budget tripled. The

nation was growing, and the federal government grew

with it. The tariff inevitably increased as well. The 1828

“Tariff of Abominations” (see Mapping the Past,

“North–South Sectionalism Intensifies,” pp. 216–217) was

the highest to that time.

But the sharp increase in the tariff, and in the role of

the federal government, sent shock waves through

American society. As the tariff raised the price of manu-

factured goods, farmers had to pay more for clothing and

farm implements. Worse, Britain and other foreign

nations retaliated against high American tariffs by setting

their own high tariffs on American imports—chiefly

tobacco, cotton, wheat, and other foodstuffs mostly

grown in the South and West. This angered southern

■Madison in Power

■Tecumseh and Indian

Resistance

■Depression and Land Hunger

■Opponents of War

■The War of 1812

■Britain Assumes the Offensive

■“The Star Spangled Banner”

■The Treaty of Ghent

■The Hartford Convention

■The Battle of New Orleans

and the End of the War

■Anglo-American

Rapprochement

■The Transcontinental Treaty

■The Monroe Doctrine

■The Era of Good Feelings

■New Sectional Issues

■New Leaders

■The Missouri Compromise

■The Election of 1824

■John Quincy Adams as

President

■Calhoun’s Exposition and

Protest

■The Meaning of Sectionalism

■Mapping the Past:

North–South Sectionalism

Intensifies

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