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STATION 1: “Era of Good Feelings” and Nationalism Cartoon

The War of 1812 closed with the Federalist Party all but destroyed. The 1816 presidential election was the last one when the Federalists' ran a candidate. He lost resoundingly.

The 1818 Congressional election brought another landslide victory for Democratic-Republicans who controlled 85 percent of the seats in the U.S. Congress. James Monroe, yet another Virginian, followed Madison in the Presidency for two terms from 1817 to 1825. Although this period has often been called the ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS due to its one-party dominance, in fact, Democratic-Republicans were deeply divided internally and a new political system was about to be created from the old Republican-Federalist competition that had been known as the FIRST PARTY SYSTEM. Although Democratic-Republicans were now the only active national party, its leaders incorporated major economic policies that had been favored by Federalists since the time of Alexander Hamilton.

The cooperation among national politicians that marked the one-party Era of Good Feelings lasted less than a decade. A new style of American politics took shape in the 1820s and 1830s whose key qualities have remained central to American politics up to the present. In this more modern system, political parties played the crucial role building broad and lasting coalitions among diverse groups in the American public. Furthermore, these parties represented more than the distinct interests of a single region or economic class. Most importantly, modern parties broke decisively from a political tradition favoring personal loyalty and patronage. Although long-lasting parties were totally unpredicted in the 1780s, by the 1830s they had become central to American politics.

STATION 2: Rising Nationalism

The Star-Spangled Banner

By Francis Scott Key (1814)

O say can you see by the dawn’s early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming;

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines on the stream,

‘Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom or the grave.

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!

Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And This be our motto: “in God is our trust,”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

|View from Mount Holyoke (The Oxbow), 1836 |

|“The imagination can scarcely conceive Arcadian vales more lovely or more peaceful than the valley of the Connecticut,” wrote the artist Thomas Cole in his |

|“Essay on American Scenery.” “Its villages are rural places where trees overspread every dwelling, and the fields upon its margin have the richest verdure.” |

|This idealized view of rural America was already starting to collapse when Cole painted View from Mount Holyoke, also known as The Oxbow. By the 1830s, Mount |

|Holyoke had become one of the most popular tourist destinations in the United States, surpassed only by Niagara Falls, and the influx of sightseers was bound to|

|disrupt its pastoral atmosphere. In selecting this corner of the country to preserve in a monumental painting, Cole produced an enduring visual record of a |

|vanishing way of life. |

|Landscape was a popular and profitable type of painting in the early decades of the nineteenth century, when a growing population of urban dwellers looked on |

|rural life as a remedy for the problems of industrialization. If they were too caught up in business to make weekend trips to the country, these affluent people|

|could at least turn their gaze on a peaceful picture of the life they’d left behind. Cole’s decision to portray the famous view from Mount Holyoke was initially|

|commercial: he took advantage of the American taste for identifiable native scenery to paint what he hoped would be a marketable painting… |

Source: Merrill, Linda, et al. Picturing America: Teachers Resource Book. National Endowment for the Humanities, 2007.

American Identity

[pic]

Thomas Cole “The Oxbow” (1836) early example of the Romantic style of the Hudson Art School

STATION 3: Changing Fashion in America

When presidents started wearing pants

For years, it was hail to the calf. But why?

By Phil Edwards

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