Protection was advocated again on national grounds, but not quite on those which had moved Hamilton. The additional receipts were now to be expended for fortifications and other national defences, and for national roads and canals. The war and blockade had been an active form of protection, under which American manufactures had sprung up. As soon as peace was made English manufacturers drove their American rivals out of business or reduced them to desperate straits. Their cries for relief had a double effect. They gave the spur to the nationalizing advocates of protection, and, as most of the manu facturers were in New England or New York, they developed in the citadel of Federalism a class which looked for help to a Republican Congress. This was the main force which brought New England into the Republican fold before 1825. An increase in the number of spindles from 8o,000 in 1811 to 500,000 in 1815, and in cotton consumption from Soo bales in i800 to 90,00o in 1815, the rise of manufacturing towns, and the rapid development of the mechanical tendencies of a people who had been hitherto almost exclusively agricultural, were influences which were to be reckoned with in the politics of a democratic country.
The tariff of 1816 imposed a duty of about 25% on imports of cotton and woollen goods, and specific duties on iron imports, except pig-iron, on which there was an ad valorem duty of 20%. In 1818 this duty also was made specific (5o cents a cwt.). The ad valorem duties carried most of the manufacturers through the financial crisis of 1818-19, but the iron duties were less satisfactory. In English manufacture the substitution of coke for charcoal in iron production led to con tinual decrease in price. As the price went down the specific duties were continually increasing the absolute amount of pro tection. Thus spared the necessity for improvements in pro duction, the American manufacturers felt English competition more keenly as the years went by, and called for more protection.
James Monroe succeeded Madison as President in 1817, and, re-elected with hardly any opposition in 182o, he served until 1825. So complete was the supremacy of the Republican Party that this is often called "the era of good feeling." It came to an end when a successor to Monroe was to be elected; the two sections of the dominant party then had their first opportunity for open struggle. During Monroe's two terms of office the nationalizing party developed the policy on which it proposed to manage national affairs. This was largely the product of the continually swelling western movement of popu lation. The influence of the steamboat was felt more and more every year, and the want of a similar improvement in land trans port was correspondingly evident. The attention drawn to west ern New York by the war had filled that part of the State with a new population. The southern Indians had been completely overthrown by Andrew Jackson during the war of 1812, and forced to cede their lands. The admission of the new States of
Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), Alabama (1819), Maine (182o) and Missouri (1820—all but Maine the product and evidence of western growth—were the immediate results of the development consequent upon the war. All the territory east of the Mississippi, except the northern part of the North-west Territory, was now formed into self-governing States; the State system had crossed the Mississippi; all that was needed for further development was the locomotive engine. The 4,000,000 of 1790 had grown into 13,000,000 in 183o.
The urgent demand of western settlers for some road to a market led to a variety of schemes to facilitate intercourse between the east and the west—the most successful being that completed in New York in 1825, the Erie canal. The Hudson river forms the great natural breach in the barrier range which runs parallel to the Atlantic coast. When the traveller has passed up the Hudson through that range he sees before him a vast champaign country extending westward to the Great Lakes, and perfectly adapted by nature for a canal. Such a canal, to turn western traffic into the lake rivers and through the lakes, the canal, and the Hudson to New York city, was begun by the State through the influence of De Witt Clin ton. It was derisively called "Clinton's big ditch" until its comple tion laid the foundations for the great commercial prosperity of New York State and city. Long before it was finished the evident certainty of its success had enticed other States into far less successful enterprises of the kind and had established as a nationalizing policy the combination of high tariffs and expendi tures for internal improvements which was long known as the "American system." The tariffs or duties on imports were to be carried as high as revenue results would justify; the superabundant revenues were to be expended on enterprises which would tend to aid the people to subdue the continent. Protection was now to be for national benefit, not for the benefit of classes. Western farmers were to have manufacturing towns at their doors, as markets for the surplus which had hitherto been rotting on their farms ; competition among manufacturers was to keep down prices ; and Henry Clay's eloquence was to commend the whole policy to the people. The old democracy, particularly in the south, insisted that the whole scheme really had its basis in bene fits to classes, that its communistic features were not such as the Constitution meant to cover by its grant of power to Con gress to levy taxation for the general welfare. The dissatisfaction in the South rose higher when the tariffs were increased in 1824 and 1828. The proportion of customs revenue to dutiable im ports rose to 37% in 1825 and to 44% in 1829; and the ratio to aggregate imports to 33% in 1825 and 37% in 1829.