Era of Good Feelings
seen combat. That's why so many mistakes were made, but it was also why the United States was for the first time in its history, fought together. Though some of the states like Massachusetts decided not to fight for the federal government unless their state was invaded, they still fought when they were needed.
The war debt did not matter to most of the people. Though it did put America in a 3 billion-dollar debt, with the exploding market it would be paid off in no time. Americans wanted to build a better nation, and most were together in trying to do that. They realized that being divided made them weak during wartime and no way to win. But they also realized that they did not want to become a world power. America went into complete isolation and did not come out of it until after the Spanish-American war.
Americans began to move west during this time. They did not want to be kept in their small towns. They wanted their own farm large enough to make them rich. More problems were made with the Indians. Many of the Indians did not want to be moved away from their land. Most were forced off, either by federal troops or just by the amount of people that were moving to there land.
We did not have many possessions overseas, and we did not want to conquer any established nation. We were an empire for democracy and an empire of wealth. There has been many empires come and go, fail and succeed. But no one has ever had the merchants make the empire. No one had seen a democracy build such a vast empire of traders and merchants since the time of Rome. Truly, this was an accomplishment to be proud of. (This Sacred Trust: American Nationality.)
It is impossible to deny that the war of 1812 had a lot of impacts on our nation. The nation grew and changed in a way that most Americans back then could not even think of. Weather they liked it or not, they all were alike in one way or another. The United States had changed into a better country; it could no longer be denied its goals. People had become proud of the nation, and that was the most important step in keeping together. If no one believed in a nation, how could it survive?
Bibliography
Commager, Henry Steele. Jefferson, Nationalism, and the Enlightenment. New
York: G. Braziller, 1975.
George Dangerfield. The Awakening of American Nationalism; New York, Harper and Row, Copywrite 1965.
John K. Mahon. The War of 1812; New York, Da Capo Press,. Copywrite 1972.
Nagel, Paul C. This Sacred Trust: American Nationality, 1798-1898. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Waldstreicher, David. In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of
American Nationalism, 1776-1820. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1997.