As chief executive, Jefferson clashed with members of the judiciary, many of whom had been late appointments by Adams. One of his primary opponents was the late appointee Chief Justice John Marshall, most notably in the case of Marbury v. Madison" class="md-crosslink">Marbury v. Madison (1803), in which the Supreme Court first exercised the power of judicial review of congressional legislation.
Marshall, JohnJohn Marshall, crayon portrait by Charles-Balthazar-Julien Févret de Saint-Mémin; in the Duke University Law School, Durham, North Carolina.Courtesy of Duke University, Durham, N.C.
By the start of Jefferson’s second term in office, Europe was engulfed in the Napoleonic Wars. The United States remained neutral, but both Britain and France imposed various orders and decrees severely restricting American trade with Europe and confiscated American ships for violating the new rules. Britain also conducted impressment raids in which U.S. citizens were sometimes seized. Unable to agree to treaty terms with Britain, Jefferson tried to coerce both Britain and France into ceasing to violate “neutral rights” with a total embargo on American exports, enacted by Congress in 1807. The results were catastrophic for American commerce and produced bitter alienation in New England, where the embargo (written backward as “O grab me”) was held to be a Southern plot to destroy New England’s wealth. In 1809, shortly after Madison was elected president, the embargo act was repealed.
Madison as president and the War of 1812
James Madison, detail of an oil painting by Asher B. Durand, 1833; in the collection of The New-York Historical Society.Collection of The New-York Historical Society
Federalist broadside publicizing French attacks on American ships. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.Madison’s presidency was dominated by foreign affairs. Both Britain and France committed depredations on American shipping, but Britain was more resented, partly because with the greatest navy it was more effective and partly because Americans were extremely sensitive to British insults to national honour. Certain expansionist elements looking to both Florida and Canada began to press for war and took advantage of the issue of naval protection. Madison’s own aim was to preserve the principle of freedom of the seas and to assert the ability of the United States to protect its own interests and its citizens. While striving to confront the European adversaries impartially, he was drawn into war against Britain, which was declared in June 1812 on a vote of 79–49 in the House and 19–13 in the Senate. There was almost no support for war in the strong Federalist New England states.
Cartoon from 1812 showing Columbia (the United States) warning Napoleon I that she will deal with him after teaching John Bull (England) a lesson. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Cartoon showing Pres. James Madison fleeing from Washington, D.C., which is being burned by the British, during the War of 1812.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-1559)
A tableau of the Treaty of Ghent, signed in Belgium, December 24, 1814.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.The War of 1812 began and ended in irony. The British had already rescinded the offending orders in council, but the news had not reached the United States at the time of the declaration. The Americans were poorly placed from every point of view. Ideological objections to armies and navies had been responsible for a minimal naval force. Ideological objections to banks had been responsible, in 1812, for the Senate’s refusal to renew the charter of the Bank of the United States. Mercantile sentiment was hostile to the administration. Under the circumstances, it was remarkable that the United States succeeded in staggering through two years of war, eventually winning important naval successes at sea, on the Great Lakes, and on Lake Champlain. On land a British raiding party burned public buildings in Washington, D.C., and drove President Madison to flee from the capital. The only action with long-term implications was Andrew Jackson’s victory at the New Orleans" class="md-crosslink">Battle of New Orleans—won in January 1815, two weeks after peace had been achieved with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent (Belgium). Jackson’s political reputation rose directly from this battle.
In historical retrospect, the most important aspect of the peace settlement was an agreement to set up a boundary commission for the Canadian border, which could thenceforth be left unguarded. It was not the end of Anglo-American hostility, but the agreement marked the advent of an era of mutual trust. The conclusion of the War of 1812, which has sometimes been called the Second War of American Independence, marked a historical cycle. It resulted in a pacification of the old feelings of pain and resentment against Great Britain and its people—still for many Americans a kind of paternal relationship. And, by freeing them of anxieties on this front, it also freed Americans to look to the West. J.R. Pole
The Indian-American problem
The young United States believed that it had inherited an “Indian problem,” but it would be equally fair to say that the victory at Yorktown confronted the Indians with an insoluble “American problem.” Whereas they had earlier dealt with representatives of Europe-based empires seeking only access to selected resources from a distant continent, now they faced a resident, united people yearly swelling in numbers, determined to make every acre of the West their own and culturally convinced of their absolute title under the laws of God and history. There was no room for compromise. Even before 1776, each step toward American independence reduced the Indians’ control over their own future. The Proclamation Line of 1763 was almost immediately violated by men like Daniel Boone on the Kentucky frontier. In the western parts of Pennsylvania and New York, however, despite extensive Indian land concessions in the 1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, they still had enough power to bar an advance toward the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes.
For armed resistance to have had any hope of success, unity would be required between all the Indians from the Appalachians to the Mississippi. This unity simply could not be achieved. The Shawnee leaders known as Tenskatawa, or the Prophet, and his brother Tecumseh attempted this kind of rallying movement, much as Pontiac had done some 40 years earlier, with equal lack of success. Some help was forthcoming in the form of arms from British traders remaining in the Northwest Territory in violation of the peace treaty, but the Indians failed to secure victory in a clash with American militia and regulars at the Battle of Tippecanoe Creek (near present-day West Lafayette, Indiana) in 1811.
Battle of Tippecanoe, lithograph by Kurz and Allison c. 1889.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-pga-01891)
The outbreak of the War of 1812 sparked renewed Indian hopes of protection by the crown, should the British win. Tecumseh himself was actually commissioned as a general in the royal forces, but, at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, he was killed, and his dismembered body parts, according to legend, were divided between his conquerors as gruesome souvenirs.
An American cartoon attacking the alliance between the “Humane British” and the Indians during the War of 1812.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.