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280 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754%u20131800Peace Overtures and a Final Victory Fortunately for the young American republic, by 1815 Britain wanted peace. The twenty-year war with France had sapped its wealth and energy, so it began negotiations with the United States in Ghent, Belgium. At first, the American commissioners%u2014John Quincy Adams, Gallatin, and Clay %u2014 demanded territory in Canada and Florida, while British diplomats sought a Native American buffer state between the United States and Canada. Both sides quickly realized that these objectives were not worth the cost of prolonged warfare. The Treaty of Ghent, signed on Christmas Eve 1814, retained the prewar borders of the United States.That result hardly justified three years of war, but before news of the treaty reached the United States, a final military victory lifted Americans%u2019 morale. On January 8, 1815, General Jackson%u2019s troops crushed the British forces attacking New Orleans. Fighting from carefully constructed breastworks, the Americans rained %u201cgrapeshot and cannister bombs%u201d on the massed British formations. The British lost 700 men, and 2,000 more were wounded or taken prisoner; just 13 Americans died, and only 58 suffered wounds. A newspaper headline proclaimed: %u201cAlmost Incredible Victory!! Glorious News.%u201d The victory made Jackson a national hero, redeemed the nation%u2019s battered pride, and undercut the Hartford Convention%u2019s demands for constitutional revision.The Federalist LegacyThe War of 1812 ushered in a new phase of the Republican political revolution. Before the conflict, Federalists had strongly supported Alexander Hamilton%u2019s program of national mercantilism%u2014a funded debt, a central bank, and tariffs%u2014while Jeffersonian Republicans had opposed it. After the war, the Republicans split into two camps. Led by Henry Clay, National Republicans pursued Federalist-like policies. In 1816, Clay pushed legislation through Congress creating the Second Bank of the United States and persuaded President Madison to sign it. In 1817, Clay won passage of the Bonus Bill, which created a national fund for roads and other internal improvements. Madison vetoed it. Reaffirming traditional Jeffersonian Republican principles, he argued that the national government lacked the constitutional authority to fund internal improvements.Meanwhile, the Federalist Party crumbled. As one supporter explained, the National Republicans in the eastern states had %u201cdestroyed the Federalist party by the adoption of its principles%u201d while the favorable farm policies of Jeffersonians maintained the Republican Party%u2019s dominance in the South and West. %u201cNo Federal character can run with success,%u201d Gouverneur Morris of New York lamented, and the election of 1818 proved him right: Republicans outnumbered Federalists 37 to 7 in the Senate and 156 to 27 in the House. Westward expansion and the success of Jefferson%u2019s Revolution of 1800 had shattered the First Party System.Marshall%u2019s Federalist Law However, Federalist policies lived on thanks to John Marshall%u2019s long tenure on the Supreme Court. Appointed chief justice by President John Adams in January 1801, Marshall had a personality and intellect that allowed him to dominate the Court until 1822 and strongly influence its decisions until his death in 1835.Three principles informed Marshall%u2019s jurisprudence: judicial authority, the supremacy of national laws, and traditional property rights (Table 7.1). Marshall claimed the right of judicial review for the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison(1803), and the Court frequently used that power to overturn state laws that, in its judgment, violated the Constitution.Asserting National Supremacy The important case of McCulloch v. Maryland(1819) involved one such law. When Congress created the Second Bank of the Treaty of GhentThe treaty signed on Christmas Eve 1814 that ended the War of 1812. It retained the prewar borders of the United States.John Marshall, by Chester Harding, c. 1830 Even at the age of seventy-five, John Marshall (1755%u20131835) had a commanding personal presence. After he became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1801, Marshall elevated the Court from a minor department of the national government to a major institution in American legal and political life. His decisions on judicial review, contract rights, the regulation of commerce, and national banking permanently shaped the character of American constitutional law. %u00a9 Boston Athenaeum, USA/Bridgeman Images.McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)A Supreme Court case that denied the right of states to tax the Second Bank of the United States, thereby asserting the dominance of national over state statutes.%u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Do not distribute.