The Era of Good Feeling: an Overview

The beginning of the Era of Good Feeling started after the end of the War of 1812 (1812-1815) which caused there to be a high rise of nationalism in the people. There was a big economic impact from the war shortly after it had ended. When the war ended "both U.S. imports and exports surged". Demands for American goods in Europe soared.

"European demand for American goods, especially agricultural staples like cotton, tobacco, and flour, increased.” Because there was such a heightened demand for good, more land was needed to fulfill them. There wasn’t enough territory however which made there be a need for expansion. During that time there was less and less paper money. People started to get bank notes, which was an easy way to get credit. When people wanted to collect on their credit, so they could purchase more land for farming, the banks paid out in silver and gold. Since so many people wanted land, they all started to collect from the banks. When they took all the silver and gold from a bank, banks had to start putting halts on payments. With a combination of the halt on payments and “Swelling crop yields in Europe” which “reduced the demand for American farm products” causing farmers who had just bought huge amounts of land to have little or no use for them, the Panic of 1819 and a depression started. “With specie reserves depleted many American banks failed, and other businesses followed. Sales of public lands plummeted.

Unemployment soared, and in some regions food and other necessities were difficult to come by.” At the same time the economy was hurting, there was hurt going on in the political side of the United States as well. During this time there was a bill trying to be passes to add the Missouri Territory into the United States as a part of the southern region. The southern states didn’t have a problem with the Missouri territory becoming a part of the US as a slave state, but the northern states opposed to it. “Eventually, in March 1820, Speaker of the House Henry Clay engineered the Missouri Compromise: Congress admitted Missouri as a slave state while admitting Maine, theretofore a part of Massachusetts, as a free state.

In addition, the agreement declared that the remainder of the Louisiana Territory above the 36°30′ parallel—the southern boundary of Missouri—was to be free of slavery.” This Missouri Crisis was the start of “sectionalization of national politics based slavery”. So, the Era of Good Feeling started well with the booming farming and economy, but quickly fell into a depression after demands diminished and banks fell, and the political part of the US started to have a crisis as well causing the fall of the Era to fall.