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238 PART 3 REVOLUTION AND REPUBLICAN CULTURE, 1754–1800

control of the Mississippi River. With the nation politically divided and under attack
from north and south, Gallatin feared that “the war might prove vitally fatal to the
United States.”

Peace Overtures and a Final Victory Fortunately for the young American repub-
lic, 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 — John Quincy Adams, Gallatin,
and Clay — demanded territory in Canada and Florida, while British diplomats
sought an Indian 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’ morale. On January 8,
1815, General Jackson’s troops crushed the British forces attacking New Orleans.
Fighting from carefully constructed breastworks, the Americans rained “grapeshot
and cannister bombs” 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
John Marshall, by Chester
Harding, c. 1830 Even at the age of 58 suffered wounds. A newspaper headline proclaimed: “Almost Incredible Victory!!
seventy-five, John Marshall (1755–1835) Glorious News.” The victory made Jackson a national hero, redeemed the nation’s
had a commanding personal presence. battered pride, and undercut the Hartford Convention’s demands for constitutional
After he became chief justice of the U.S. revision.
Supreme Court in 1801, Marshall elevated
the Court from a minor department of
the national government to a major insti-
tution in American legal and political life. The Federalist Legacy
His decisions on judicial review, contract
rights, the regulation of commerce, and The War of 1812 ushered in a new phase of the Republican political revolution.
national banking permanently shaped Before the conflict, Federalists had strongly supported Alexander Hamilton’s program
the character of American constitutional of national mercantilism — a funded debt, a central bank, and tariffs — while Jefferso-
law. © Boston Athenaeum, USA/Bridgeman Images.
nian 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,
Treaty of Ghent Clay pushed legislation through Congress creating the Second Bank of the United
The treaty signed on Christmas Eve 1814 that
ended the War of 1812. It retained the prewar States and persuaded President Madison to sign it. In 1817, Clay won passage of the
borders of the United States. 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 inter-
nal improvements.
Meanwhile, the Federalist Party crumbled. As one supporter explained, the
National Republicans in the eastern states had “destroyed the Federalist party by the
adoption of its principles” while the favorable farm policies of Jeffersonians main-
tained the Republican Party’s dominance in the South and West. “No Federal charac-
ter can run with success,” 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’s Revo-
lution of 1800 had shattered the First Party System.

Marshall’s Federalist Law However, Federalist policies lived on thanks to John
Marshall’s 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’s 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
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