Manufacturing. 

The U.S. leads all nations in the value of its yearly manufacturing output. About 16% of the annual gross domestic product is accounted for by manufacturing, which employs about 15% of the nation's workers. The total value of manufacturers' shipments in 2000 was nearly $4 trillion. Although manufacturing remains a key component of the U.S. economy, it has declined in relative importance since the late 1960s. From 1980 to 2000 the overall number of employees in manufacturing decreased from nearly 22 million to about 18.4 million, while the total U.S. nonfarm labor force grew by more than 37 million persons.

Manufacturing regions. 

Perhaps the most important change in recent decades has been the growth of manufacturing in regions outside the Northeast and North Central regions. The nation's industrial core developed in the Northeast. This core is still the location of the greatest concentration of industry, but it has become relatively less significant than in the past. In the early 2000s nearly half of the nation's manufacturing employees were found in the 21 Northeast and North Central states that extend from New England to Kansas. In 1947, however, about 75% of the manufacturing employees lived in the same region. Since 1947, the South's share of the nation's manufacturing workers has increased from 19% to 33%, and the West's share has grown from 7 to 18%. Within the North, manufacturing is centered in the Middle Atlantic and East North Central states, which account for more than 35% of the annual value added by all manufacturing in the U.S. Located in this area are five of the top manufacturing states—New York, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, which together are responsible for approximately 26% of the value added by manufacturing in all states each year. 

The greatest gains in manufacturing in the South have been in Texas, and the most phenomenal growth in the West has been in California, which at the close of the 1990s was the leading manufacturing state, accounting for about 11% of the annual U.S. value added by manufacturing.

Principal products. 

Ranked by value of manufacturer's shipments, the leading categories of U.S. manufactured goods are transportation equipment, computers and electronic products, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, processed foods, machinery, fabricated metal products, and petroleum and coal products.

Transportation equipment, including passenger cars, trucks, airplanes, space vehicles, ships and boats, and railroad equipment, accounted for nearly 16% of the value of shipments by U.S. manufacturers in 2000. Michigan, with its huge automobile industry, is a major producer of transportation equipment; the manufacture of road motor vehicles is also central to the economies of Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee. California and Texas are leaders in the aerospace industry. Ohio, which has a large concentration of tire-manufacturing plants, has long been a leader in the rubber industry.

California supplies more than 25% of the value of shipments of computers and other electronic products; other leading states were Texas and Massachusetts. Machinery, a category that includes engines, farm equipment, various kinds of construction machinery, and refrigeration equipment, accounted for 7% of U.S. shipments in 2000. Illinois, California, Ohio, Michigan, New York, and Texas rank among the leaders in the machinery production. 

Food processing accounted for about 10% of the overall annual value of manufacturers' shipments in 2000, and the chemical and pharmaceutical industry contributed a similar share. Texas and Louisiana are leaders in chemical manufacturing. The petroleum and natural gas produced and refined in both states are basic raw materials used in manufacturing many chemical products. New Jersey holds an important role in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and medicines. Food processing is an important industry in several states noted for the production of food crops and livestock, or both. California has a large fruit- and vegetable-processing industry. Meat packing in Texas, Iowa, and Kansas and dairy processing in Wisconsin and California help make these states leaders in food manufacturing.

The electrical equipment industry includes the manufacture of electric industrial apparatus, lighting equipment, and household appliances. Ohio, Illinois, California, and North Carolina are all leaders in this sector. The manufacture of fabricated metal products and primary metals is concentrated in the nation's industrial core region. Iron ore from the Lake Superior district, plus that imported from Canada and other countries, and Appalachian coal are the basis for a huge iron and steel industry. Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Michigan are leading states in the value of primary metal output. The fabricated metal industry, which includes the manufacture of cans and other containers, hardware, and metal forgings and stampings, is important in the same states. The primary metals industry of these states provides the basic raw materials, especially steel, that are used in making metal products.

Printing and publishing is a widespread industry, with newspapers published throughout the country. New York, with its book-publishing industry, has long been a leading state, but California, Illinois, and Pennsylvania are also important. Paper products manufacture is a major industry, particularly in those states with large stands of softwood trees available for harvest. The manufacture of paper and paperboard contributes significantly to the economies of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, and several other states. 

Other major U.S. manufactures include plastics, textiles, clothing, lumber, furniture, tobacco products, leather goods, and nonmetallic mineral products such as stone, clay, and glass items.

LEADING U.S. MANUFACTURES, 2000

  

  Value of Shipments * 

  
ALL MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 

  $3,929.0 

  
DURABLE GOODS

  $2,233.0

  
Transportation equipment

  613.5

  
Computers and electronic products

  485.8

  
Machinery

  273.4

  
Fabricated metal products

  239.5

  
Primary metals

  152.1

  
Electrical equipment 

  122.2

  
Nonmetallic mineral products 

  89.6

  
Wood products

  82.6

  
NONDURABLE GOODS

  $1,696.0

  
Chemicals and pharmaceuticals

  405.8

  
Food products

  401.5

  
Petroleum and coal products

  213.4

  
Plastics and rubber products

  169.1

  
Paper products

  156.7

  
Textiles and apparel

  140.6

  
Beverages and tobacco products

  103.5

  
Printed materials

  96.5

  

* - In billions of dollars


  


AVERAGE WEEKLY EARNINGS IN SELECTED U.S. INDUSTRY GROUPS * 

  
Industry group

  1970

  1980

  1990

  2000

  
U.S. average

  298

  275

  260

  272

  
Manufacturing

  332

  337

  332

  344

  
Mining

  409

  464

  454

  421

  
Construction

  486

  430

  395

  399

  
Transportation, public utilities

  388

  410

  379

  359

  
Wholesale trade

  341

  312

  309

  336

  
Retail trade

  205

  172

  146

  156

  
Finance, insurance, real estate

  281

  245

  268

  311

  
Services

  240

  223

  241

  262

  

* - In constant 1982 dollars


  


Energy. 

The energy to power the U.S. economy is derived from various sources. Measured in terms of heat-producing capacity (British thermal units, or Btu), petroleum provides about 39% of the total energy consumed in the U.S. It supplies nearly all of the energy used to power the nation's transportation system, and it is used to heat millions of houses and factories.

Natural gas is the source of about 23% of the energy consumed. Many industrial plants use natural gas for heat and power, and millions of households burn it for heating and cooking. Coal provides about 22% of the energy consumed. Its major uses are in the generation of electricity, which uses more than three-fourths of all the coal consumed, and in the manufacture of steel.

Water power generates about 4% and nuclear power about 8% of the nation's energy. Both are employed mainly to produce electricity for residential and industrial use. Nuclear energy has been viewed as an important alternative to expensive petroleum and natural gas, but its development has proceeded somewhat more slowly than originally anticipated. People are reluctant to live near nuclear plants for fear of a possible radiation-releasing accident. Another obstacle to the expansion of nuclear power use is that fully satisfactory ways of disposing of radioactive wastes have not been devised. Geothermal energy, wood, agricultural waste, municipal solid waste, and other renewable energy sources account for the remaining 4% of annual U.S. energy consumption.

More than one-third of the energy consumed in the U.S. is used in the generation of electricity. The nation's electric utility companies have a total installed capacity of about 680 million kw and produce about 3.2 trillion kwh of electricity each year. Coal is the most common fuel used by electric power plants, and more than half of the nation's yearly electricity is generated in coal-fired plants. The states producing the most coal-generated electricity include Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Georgia. Natural gas accounts for about 10% of the electricity produced, and refined petroleum for about 3%. The states producing the most electricity from natural gas include Texas, Florida, and Louisiana, and refined petroleum is especially important in Florida, New York, and Hawaii. Hydroelectric facilities generate about 10% of the electricity, and nuclear power plants about 21%. Washington, Oregon, California, and New York are the leading producers of hydroelectricity, and Illinois, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, North Carolina, and California have the most productive nuclear power industries. During the late 1990s, many states began deregulating their electric power industries, enabling customers to choose from among competing electricity suppliers; implementation of deregulation in California led to severe power shortages, drastic energy price increases, and a financial crisis for the state's utility industry during the winter of 2000–01. 

For many years, petroleum appeared abundant and cheap, and it became the basis for an American life-style based on extensive use of the private automobile. Since 1947, when the U.S. became a net importer of oil, annual domestic production has not been enough to meet the demands of the highly mobile American society. In 1970 domestic crude oil production reached a record high of 3.5 billion bbl, but this had to be supplemented by imports amounting to 12% of the nation's overall crude oil supply. Most Americans were unaware of the dependence of the country on foreign petroleum until the oil embargo by some Middle Eastern nations in 1973–74. In 1973 the nation imported about one-fourth of its total supply of crude oil. Imports continued to rise until 1977, when about half of the crude and refined oil supply was imported. Imports then declined for a time, largely through the introduction of energy conservation measures and the increased use of other domestic energy sources such as coal. As of 2000, however, about 60% of daily petroleum needs in the U.S. were met by net imports. Abundant domestic supplies of coal allow the U.S. to export part of its annual production. See ENERGY SUPPLY, WORLD,.

Transportation. 

The development of transportation facilities was of crucial importance in the growth of the U.S. The first routes of travel were natural waterways; the earliest overland routes were rough trails suitable for travel on foot or horseback. No surfaced roads existed until the 1790s, when the first turnpikes were built, some under private auspices and some by state government. Besides the overland roads, many canals were constructed between the late 18th century and 1850 to link navigable rivers and lakes in the eastern U.S. and in the Great Lakes region. Steam railroads began to appear in the East in the 1820s. The first transcontinental railroad was constructed between 1862 and 1869 by the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies, both of which received large subsidies from the federal government. Transcontinental railroads were the chief means of transportation used by settlers who populated the West in the latter part of the 19th century and were also of utmost importance for moving goods from one part of the country to another. The railroads continued to expand until 1917, when the length of operated track reached a peak of about 407,165 km (about 253,000 mi). Thereafter, motor transport became a serious competitor of the railroads both for passengers and freight.

Air transport began to compete with other modes of transport in the U.S. after World War I. The first commercial flights in the U.S. were made in 1918 and carried mail. Passenger service began to gain importance in the late 1920s, but not until the advent of commercial jet craft after World War II did air transport become a leading mode of travel.

During the late 1990s railroads annually handled about 37% of the total freight traffic; trucks carried nearly 28% of the freight, and oil pipelines conveyed almost 17%. Approximately 18% was shipped on inland waterways. Although the freight handled by airlines amounted to less than 0.4% of the total, much of the cargo consisted of high-priority or high-value items. Private motor vehicles of all types accounted for about 89% of the total annual passenger traffic carried by the various modes of transportation. Airlines were the second leading mover of people, carrying nearly 10% of the passenger traffic. Public transit systems and railroads carried about 1% of passenger traffic. 

Roads and railroads. 

The transportation network spreads into all sections of the country, but the web of railroads and highways is much more dense in the E half of the U.S., where it serves the nation's largest urban and industrial concentrations.

In the late 1990s the U.S. had about 6.36 million km (about 3.95 million mi) of streets, roads, and highways. More than 60% of the roadways were paved; of the unpaved roadways, about 88% were locally maintained roads in rural areas. The National Highway System connects the nation's principal cities; the total route length in the late 1990s was 259,407 km (161,188 mi), including 75,119 km (46,677 mi) of interstate highways and 184,288 km (114,511 mi) of other freeways and expressways. Texas had the longest road system by far; California, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, and Missouri also had lengthy road networks.

More than 215 million road motor vehicles (including motorcycles) were registered in the U.S. in the late 1990s. More than 61% were classified as passenger cars, and another 33% were sport utility vehicles, light trucks, or other vehicles with two axles and four tires. California had the most registered motor vehicles by far, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania.

As of 2000, Class I railroads—the 8 largest freight railroad companies in the U.S.—operated 71% of the total trackage, employed 88% of railroad workers, and generated 91% of the railroad revenue. Overall, the U.S. had 274,413 km (170,512 mi) of operated railroad track. Of some 20,000 locomotives in service on Class I railroads, the overwhelming majority were diesel powered. Coal made up about 44% of the freight carried, followed by chemicals (9%), farm products (8%), and nonmetallic minerals (7%). Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corp.), a federally subsidized concern, operates almost all the intercity passenger trains in the U.S.; it carried about 22.5 million intercity passengers annually in 2000. The number of passenger cars in service declined from more than 11,000 in 1970 to fewer than 1900 three decades later. Takeovers and mergers among the major private railroad companies were common during the 1980s and ‘90s.

Water transport. 

The U.S. has a relatively small merchant marine. Fewer than 450 vessels of 1000 gross tons and up are registered in the U.S. Many American shipowners register their ships in foreign countries such as Liberia and Panama, however, so they can operate the ship at a lower cost by, for instance, paying lower wages to the crews. 

The leading seaport in the U.S. for foreign trade in 2000 was the port of Houston, which handled about 109 million metric tons of export and import cargo valued at more than $43 billion. Other leading ports for foreign trade included the Port of South Louisiana; New Orleans; New York; and Corpus Christi and Beaumont, Texas. Although it no longer ranks first among U.S. seaports, the Port of New York remains a significant destination for both passenger and freight traffic; important facilities of the port are in the New Jersey communities of Elizabeth and Newark. The principal cargoes carried by U.S. vessels include crude petroleum, refined petroleum products, coal, crude materials, and farm products. 

The inland waterway network of the U.S. has three main components—the Mississippi R. system, the Great Lakes, and coastal waterways. About 57% of the annual freight traffic is on the Mississippi R. and its tributaries, about 11% is on the Great Lakes, and 23% is on the coastal waterways; intraport traffic accounts for nearly all of the remaining 9%.

The Mississippi R. system has a combined network of waterways that exceed 24,140 km (15,000 mi) in length. Saint Louis, Mo., Memphis, Tenn., and Cincinnati, Ohio, are major ports on the Mississippi system. The Great Lakes carry more commerce than any other lakes in the world. The leading Great Lakes seaport is Duluth, Minn.-Superior, Wis. Chicago ranks next, followed by Detroit, Cleveland, and Toledo, Ohio. Oceangoing vessels can sail between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence Seaway (opened in 1959). The Intracoastal Waterway is a navigable, toll-free shipping route extending for about 1740 km (about 1080 mi) along the Atlantic coast and for about 1770 km (about 1100 mi) along the Gulf of Mexico coast. 

Air transport. 

Airlines in the U.S. annually carry more than 640 million passengers, the vast majority of whom are domestic travelers. The nation has more than 5100 public and 13,000 private airports. Among the busiest are William B. Hartsfield International Airport, near Atlanta, Ga.; Chicago-O'Hare International Airport; Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, in Texas; Los Angeles International Airport; and Newark, La Guardia, and John F. Kennedy airports, all serving the New York metropolitan area. Deregulation of the domestic AIR TRANSPORT INDUSTRY, (q.v.) in the early 1980s led to fare wars, mergers, and takeovers, as competition by the major carriers for high-density passenger markets grew increasingly intense. U.S. air carriers were greatly affected by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which began with the hijacking of four U.S. civilian aircraft. Following the attacks, security measures were tightened at U.S. airports, and Congress approved $15 billion in emergency assistance for the airline industry. 

Currency and Banking. 

The U.S. decimal currency consists of coins and paper money. According to federal law, only the U.S. Department of the Treasury (see TREASURY, DEPARTMENT OF THE,) and the FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM, (q.v.) may issue coins and currency. Coins are made in six denominations—the penny, or 1¢; the nickel, or 5¢; the dime, or 10¢; the quarter, or 25¢; the half-dollar, or 50¢; and the dollar, or 100¢. Federal Reserve notes comprise nearly all the currency in circulation in the U.S. They are issued in seven denominations—$1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. At the start of 2002 the basic U.S. money supply, including currency and demand deposits, totaled nearly $1.2 trillion. See also CURRENCY,; MONEY,. 

As of 2001, the U.S. had about 8150 federally insured commercial banks with combined assets of more than $6.5 trillion; over 80% of these assets were concentrated in some 400 banks, each with holdings of at least $1 billion. Banks in the U.S. are chartered under the laws of either a state or the federal government. State-chartered banks are regulated by officials of the state in which they are located. National banks are under the supervision of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

The Federal Reserve System, created by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, is the central banking organization of the U.S. All national banks are required by law to belong to the Federal Reserve System. State banks may voluntarily become members if they meet certain requirements. Each member bank operates within the district of 1 of the 12 Federal Reserve banks.

Banking in the 1990s was a highly competitive business, as banks offered a variety of services to attract customers and sought to stem the flow of investors to brokerage houses, insurance firms, and other financial service providers. The bank holding companies with the most assets at the end of 2000 included Citigroup and J. P. Morgan Chase, both based in New York City; Bank of America and First Union, with headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.; Wells Fargo, based in San Francisco; and Bank One, headquartered in Chicago. Mergers of several major firms consolidated the banking industry in the late 1990s.

The U.S. in 2000 had about 1590 federally insured savings institutions, of which about two-thirds were regulated by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision; the combined assets of all these banks exceeded $1.2 trillion. The industry was overhauled in the late 1980s and early '90s after many savings and loan institutions became insolvent. See also BANKING,; FINANCE,; SAVINGS INSTITUTIONS,; THRIFT SUPERVISION, OFFICE OF.

Commerce. 

Most domestic commerce, or trade, in the U.S. is carried on by wholesalers and retailers. Wholesalers buy goods from producers and sell them mainly to retail business firms. Retailers sell goods to the final consumer. Wholesale and retail trade together account for about 16% of the annual gross domestic product of the U.S. and employ about 20% of the labor force. An increasing proportion of wholesale and retail buying is conducted over the Internet. 

Wholesale trade. 

In the late 1990s the U.S. had more than 520,000 wholesale establishments, which together registered sales of more than $4.2 trillion. The distribution of groceries and related products, the leading type of wholesale business, had annual sales approaching $600 billion, or some 14% of all wholesale activity. Next in rank were motor vehicles, parts, and supplies; professional and commercial equipment and supplies; electrical goods; machinery, equipment, and supplies; and petroleum and petroleum products.

Wholesalers tend to be located in large urban centers that enable them to distribute goods over wide sections of the nation. The New York City metropolitan area, including Long Island and northern New Jersey, is the country's leading wholesale center; it serves as the national distribution center for a variety of goods and as the main regional center for the eastern U.S. Other leading wholesale centers include Los Angeles, the main center for the W part of the U.S.; Chicago; San Francisco; Philadelphia; Boston; Atlanta, Ga.; Houston and Dallas, Tex.; and Miami, Fla. 

Retail trade. 

In the late 1990s the U.S. had more than 2.6 million retail outlets, of which about 1.6 million had payrolls; many of the remainder were small family-run establishments. The firms with payrolls had aggregate annual sales approaching $3 trillion. Automotive dealers, with about 25% of the total yearly retail trade, and food stores, with about 15%, are the leading retailers. Other major types of retail business include those involving sales of general merchandise; clothing; meals and snacks; automotive fuels, lubricants, and supplies; lumber and other building materials; pharmaceuticals and cosmetics; and furniture and household appliances.

The volume of retail sales is directly related to the number of consumers in an area. The four leading states in annual retail sales—California, Texas, Florida, and New York—are also the four most populous states. The New York City metropolitan area, which includes Long Island and northern New Jersey, accounts for more than $170 billion in retail sales annually; the Los Angeles-Anaheim-Riverside region ranks second, with more than $120 billion annually. Other important retail centers are the metropolitan regions comprising Chicago (including Gary, Ind.); San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, Calif.; Philadelphia, Wilmington, Del., and Trenton, N.J.; Detroit and Ann Arbor, Mich.; Washington, D.C., and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs; Boston, Lawrence, Salem, Lowell, and Brockton, Mass.; and Dallas and Fort Worth, Tex.

Foreign Trade. 

Foreign, or international, trade enables the U.S. to specialize in producing those goods it is best suited to make from its available resources. The U.S. is the world's leading trading nation, with an annual merchandise trade volume of almost $2 trillion in 2000. Total merchandise exports in 2000 amounted to $772 billion, and imports to $1.224 trillion. Beginning in the mid-1970s, the nation's imports of expensive foreign petroleum and of manufactured goods from Canada and Asia (especially Japan) created a trade imbalance. The annual U.S. merchandise trade deficit increased steadily throughout the 1990s, reaching a record $452 billion in 2000. The negative trade balance in goods is partially offset by a positive balance in services. In 2000, for example, U.S. exports of services amounted to $293 billion and imports of services totaled $217 billion, for an annual surplus in services of $76 billion. 

Nonagricultural products usually account for more than 90% of the yearly value of merchandise exports and agricultural products for less than 10%. The leading export categories include electrical machinery, motor vehicles, computing equipment and office machines, chemicals, and agricultural commodities of various types. Nonagricultural products contribute more than 95% of the total annual value of U.S. imports. Principal import categories include motor vehicles, computer equipment and office machines, crude oil, clothing, and television sets and other consumer electronic equipment.

Canada, Mexico, and Japan are the country's most important trade partners; they provide the markets for about 46% of total annual U.S. exports and are the source of about 42% of the nation's imports. Other leading trade partners include China, Great Britain, Germany, Taiwan, South Korea, and France. Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Canada, Venezuela, and Nigeria are leading sources of U.S. crude petroleum imports. The U.S. is linked with Canada and Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement. 

Tourism. 

Each year in the late 1990s travelers in the U.S. spent more than $425 billion for transportation, food and drinks, various kinds of amusement, and motel and hotel accommodations. Travel and tourism have contributed substantially to the growth of such businesses as motels, restaurants, rental-car agencies, amusement parks, and various retail specialty shops, including those that sell cameras and film, clothing, sporting goods, gifts, and souvenirs.

In recent decades visitors from overseas have become an increasingly important part of the U.S. tourist business. By 2000 the number of foreign visitors to the U.S. exceeded 50 million annually, and their expenditures had risen to more than $100 billion. About 29% of all foreign travelers were residents of Canada, and 20% were Mexicans. Of the travelers from overseas, Japanese, British, German, and French tourists were the most numerous. 

Each year in the late 1990s, Americans took more than 1 billion person-trips to destinations within the U.S. (A person-trip is one person making one trip, one way, to a destination at least 80 km/50 mi from home.) New York City is a popular destination among both domestic and foreign travelers, and tourism is a mainstay of the economies of California, Florida, and Hawaii. Small towns across the country that have created or capitalized on local attractions (such as the country music theaters in Branson, Mo., and theme parks like Disney World in Orlando, Fla.) are also major tourist destinations. An economic slowdown and the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, led to a decline in the U.S. travel industry in the early 2000s. 

Each year in excess of 280 million recreational visits are made to the more than 350 areas administered by the NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, (q.v.), including 60 million visits to the more than 50 national parks. Millions of people each year visit the various national monuments, buildings, and museums in the Washington, D.C., area. More than 14 million visits are made annually to Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the San Francisco region. More than 19 million people a year travel on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia, and about 5.7 million visit the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. Conveniently located within a day's journey of the eastern U.S., Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most popular national park in the country, receiving more than 10 million recreational visits annually.         M.C.B., MELVIN C. BARBER III, M.A., Ph.D.

HISTORY 

In addition to cross-references contained in the following account of U.S. history, the reader is referred, for supplementary materials, to the history sections of articles on the individual states and to separate articles on U.S. presidents. For additional information on historical figures, see biographies of those whose names are not followed by dates.

COLONIAL DEVELOPMENTS 

The U.S. did not emerge as a nation-state until near the end of the 18th century, but national history is properly introduced with a brief survey of the chief events leading to the formation of the Union. The voyages, in the last years of the 15th century, of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot, pioneer navigators who helped to open the European era of exploration and colonial expansion, were the decisive initial developments. On the strength of Columbus's explorations and those of later Spanish navigators, Spain staked out a vast domain in the New World. Cabot, sailing in the service of Henry VII, king of England, reached the North American mainland in 1497. On the basis of this voyage, England later claimed the entire continent. Among other early voyagers to North America were Giovanni da Verrazano of Italy and Jacques Cartier of France. Sailing under the flag of France, they initiated a protracted period of French colonial activity.

The New World these navigators “discovered” had actually been inhabited for at least 20,000 years before Columbus's arrival. In 1492 the indigenous population of Indians (as Columbus misnamed them) numbered more than 90 million, of whom about 10 million lived in America north of present-day Mexico. Contact with Europeans precipitated a demographic disaster for these varied, and often highly civilized, native American peoples. Influenza, typhus, measles, and smallpox reduced native populations in the more densely settled regions of Central and South America by up to 95 percent within the first 150 years after contact. In North America, where the aboriginal cultures tended to be seminomadic and populations less dense, the population collapse was more protracted, but no less devastating. Once European colonists established permanent settlements in North America, they introduced not only diseases but also cattle and horses that displaced game animals and invaded Indian agricultural lands, altering the environment so drastically that Indian populations declined to a fraction of precontact levels. Even in the absence of warfare, European colonization signaled the wholesale destruction of native cultures. See AMERICAN INDIANS,.

The First Settlements. 

The founding of Saint Augustine (in what is now Florida) by the Spanish in 1565 marked the beginning of colonization within the present boundaries of the U.S. At the time of this settlement, England and Spain were engaged in warfare on the high seas, which in 1588 would culminate in the virtual annihilation of Spanish naval power (see ARMADA, SPANISH, ). After this defeat, Spain no longer figured as a potent rival of England for possession of the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Before that time, however, these same military pressures helped inhibit English efforts at colonization.

In 1585 an expedition sponsored by Sir Walter Raleigh settled on ROANOKE ISLAND, (q.v.) off the coast of present-day North Carolina. The colony soon failed, in part because the settlers were more concerned with hunting for gold than with learning how to sustain their colony by agriculture. In 1587 Raleigh dispatched a larger group led by John White (fl. 1585–93) to the region, which he had named Virginia to honor Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. About a month after the colonists landed, Virginia Dare was born, the first birth to English parents in America. John White soon sailed back to England for additional supplies. The war with Spain prevented his returning to Roanoke until 1590, by which time the settlers had disappeared. The mystery of what happened to Raleigh's Lost Colony has never been solved.

The first permanent English settlement in North America was JAMESTOWN, (q.v.). Established in 1607, Jamestown was a project of the Virginia Co. of London, a joint-stock corporation chartered in 1606 by King James I of England for trading in and colonizing North America. After a series of catastrophic misadventures, in which thousands died because of disease, starvation, and (in 1622) a war with the Indians, the Crown revoked the company's charter in 1624 and took control of the colony as a royal province. Executive power in the new regime was vested in appointees of the Crown, but the colonists were eventually permitted to retain the representative assembly, called the House of Burgesses, that had been founded in 1619.

After the colonial government removed controls on the production of tobacco, there was a major expansion in the economy and in the English population of the Chesapeake Bay region. The incessant demand for labor to grow tobacco created a harsh system of indentured servitude. In the last quarter of the 17th century, when it became prohibitively expensive to import English laborers, African slaves emerged as the predominant agricultural labor force in the southern mainland.

French and Dutch Activities. 

During the decade following the settlement of Jamestown, France and the Netherlands—the other leading maritime nations of Europe—actively entered the contest for territory in North America. The French quickly recognized the importance of controlling the Saint Lawrence River, the best available route to the interior. In 1608, as the first step in their strategic design, they founded Québec. The brilliant achievements of such explorers as Jacques Marquette, Louis Jolliet, and Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle brought vast areas of the interior, including the entire Mississippi River valley, under nominal French ownership during the next 75 years. Consolidation of this enormous American dominion was impossible for various reasons, but stemmed especially from the French desire to trade with the Indians for furs and skins, rather than to try to push them off their lands, as the English did. In addition, the French had exported to America the absolutist institutions and traditions of the homeland. Their colonial policies, centrally directed and diametrically opposed to those of the English, discouraged large-scale immigration and the settlement of enduring communities with responsible local authority. As a consequence, French colonial populations remained small throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, enabling the French to cultivate military alliances with Indian tribes, which saw them as less threatening than the English settlers.

The Dutch based their claims to North American territory on the explorations of Henry Hudson. An English mariner in the employ of the Dutch East India Co., Hudson had, in 1609, entered present-day New York Bay and explored the river that now bears his name. During the next few years the Dutch dispatched several trading vessels to the region, which they named New Netherland. Trading posts were founded on Manhattan Island and near the site of modern Albany in 1613–14. Because of the profitable fur trade, the Dutch made no immediate attempt to colonize New Netherland. Permanent colonists began to arrive in 1624, and New Amsterdam (now New York City) was founded the following year. New Netherland grew slowly. Constant friction or warfare with the Indians, administrative incompetence, and internal unrest were characteristic, and the colony never attained the stability and vigor of Virginia or of the English colonies later founded in America.

The New England Colonies. 

English colonizing activity resumed in 1620 when a party of English Separatists, a dissident sect that had previously withdrawn from the Church of England, acquired the right to settle in Virginia. Whether by accident or design, their ship, the MAYFLOWER, (q.v.), entered Massachusetts Bay and dropped anchor in what is now the harbor of Provincetown, Mass. Recognizing that they were outside the bounds of any organized government, 41 of the men in the group, better known as the PILGRIM FATHERS, (q.v.), gathered aboard ship on Nov. 21, 1620, and signed an agreement called the Mayflower Compact, the first written American constitution. Later they founded PLYMOUTH COLONY, (q.v.), on a site near the head of Cape Cod.

The organization of Plymouth Colony inaugurated the colonization of New England, a region peopled mainly by Puritan religious dissenters. In this phase, the most significant development was the founding in 1629–30 of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, just north of Plymouth, by a joint-stock company that used its corporate charter to develop a complete system of self-government. Soon after the establishment of Massachusetts, dissidents expelled from the colony formed the nucleus of a settlement from which Rhode Island grew; in 1636 settlers from the Bay Colony looking for better land on which to raise cattle migrated westward to found Connecticut. Both of these colonies created governments modeled on that of Massachusetts, with an elected legislative body, or general court, and an elected governor. Growing political turmoil in England prevented the king from reining in these nearly independent colonies; not until 1676 would the English government attempt to establish control over Massachusetts and its neighbors. Meanwhile they grew, prospered, and developed their own distinctive traditions of government.

Proprietary Colonies. 

After the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the English Crown issued no more corporate charters for colonization projects in America. Beginning with Maryland, which was chartered in 1632 as a refuge for Roman Catholics and others, all the new colonies were organized according to the provisions of proprietary charters. In general the people of the proprietary provinces received qualified legislative privileges, but administrative authority was vested in the charter grantees who received from the kin virtually complete freedom to establish any form of government, as well as the right to dispose of all lands within the boundaries of their colonies.

With the exception of Georgia, which was chartered in 1732, all these English proprietary colonies in North America were organized before the end of the 17th century. In 1663 a company of eight English nobles was granted what is now North Carolina and South Carolina. New Netherland, lying across the lines of communications between the northern and southern possessions of England, was forcibly annexed in 1664 and renamed New York. New Jersey, mainly comprising territory that the Dutch had previously seized from Sweden, was formed in the same year. New Hampshire, consisting of settlements formerly under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, was organized 15 years later. In 1681 William Penn received a charter for the region that he named Pennsylvania.

Political Developments. 

In terms of political development, this period was notable for many reasons. The persecution of Puritans in England by Charles I drove numerous refugees to America, but also precipitated the ENGLISH REVOLUTION, (q.v.) in 1642, which seven years later led to the king's execution and the formation of the Commonwealth. Gradually, Parliament emerged as the ruler of the country and its colonies. The first manifestation of parliamentary authority over the colonies was the Navigation Act of 1651, which required that colonial imports and exports be shipped in English-flag vessels. The first of a long series of increasingly elaborate enactments designed to regulate colonial commerce, this act sought to guarantee the benefits theoretically inherent in MERCANTILISM, (q.v.). The Navigation Acts prohibited commercial relations between the colonies and non-English nations. Although colonial merchants freely ignored the provisions when it suited their purposes, the laws created a trading environment that generally benefited colonies and mother country alike. Because of lax enforcement, smuggling and illicit trade were common and, over the next century, became an accepted part of American colonial mores.

In 1660, after the death of Oliver Cromwell and the end of the protectorate, Charles II was restored to the English throne. Although he took little active interest in the colonies, his brother (and later his successor as James II) was determined to impose stricter control over England's American possessions. The new English regime broadened the navigation laws and transformed New Hampshire and Massachusetts into royal provinces. The revocation of the Massachusetts charter in 1684 reflected royal hostility to the trade violations, autonomous status, and generally independent attitude of the colony. In 1686 James II decreed the unification of New York, New Jersey, and the New England colonies into a single royal province, the Dominion of New England. Colonial resistance to the change assumed various forms. Connecticut and Rhode Island refused to yield their charters to Sir Edmund Andros, the royal governor. In Massachusetts, armed rebellion broke out in 1689 following the Glorious Revolution in England. The Boston populace arrested Andros, seized control of the colonial government, and dispatched emissaries and greetings to William III and Mary II, the new English sovereigns. New York City also became the scene of rebellion in the new rulers' name led by the merchant Jacob Leisler (1640–91).

THE STRUGGLE FOR NORTH AMERICA 

The accession of William and Mary in 1689 occasioned a complete reversal of English diplomatic policy, which under Charles II and James II had been pro-French. As a result of the change, which had immediate and long-lasting repercussions in North America, the English government now challenged the military power of France, its chief rival for colonial empire. The accession of Anne and the formation of Great Britain, politically uniting Scotland, England, and Wales, by the Act of Union (1707), intensified the conflict.

The British-French Wars. 

The ensuing struggle, extending in successive phases for nearly a century, was fought in many parts of the world. In North America, probably the most fiercely contested battleground, the conflict's successive phases—known collectively as the French and Indian wars—were KING WILLIAM'S WAR (1689–97), QUEEN ANNE'S WAR (1702–13), KING GEORGE'S WAR, (1744–48), and the FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR (1754–63) (qq.v.). The French regime in North America possessed various advantages in these wars. It was highly centralized, had a well-disciplined military, and numbered most eastern American Indian tribes among its allies. The British colonies by contrast rarely cooperated with one another (see ALBANY CONGRESS,), enjoyed few reliable alliances with the Indians, and demonstrated little military prowess. On the other hand, the British had vast numerical superiority from the outset; by the 1750s they had a population advantage of nearly 30 to 1 over the French.

The first three of the wars were indecisive, largely because of the diplomacy of the IROQUOIS, (q.v.), a confederation of five (later six) Indian nations located in New York, which occupied the critical middle ground between New France and the northern British colonies. The Iroquois at first pursued a policy of neutrality while offering limited military alliances to both sides; their activities helped limit the amount of land that changed hands in North America before 1750. Only the Peace of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (known as Queen Anne's War in the colonies) in 1713, obliged the French to relinquish considerable territory, including ACADIA (q.v.), Newfoundland, and the region surrounding Hudson Bay.

A lapse in the Iroquois policy of neutrality brought on the last and most decisive colonial war. The Iroquois had claimed sovereignty over the Ohio River valley and had long succeeded in keeping both the French and English from establishing a permanent presence there. After 1748, however, Pennsylvania traders and Virginia land speculators gained footholds in the valley; this caused the French to build forts there to protect their access, via the river, to French settlements in the Mississippi valley. The confrontation between England and France over control of the Ohio basin led to the final phase of the struggle, the French and Indian War.

From its modest beginnings in 1754, this war quickly became a contest for domination of the continent. Although the first half of the war brought a series of disasters for the British and their colonies, after 1757 Great Britain and its allies in the European extension of the conflict dealt stunning blows to France (see SEVEN YEARS' WAR,). In North America, the fighting in this second phase of the war was carried on mainly by the British army, aided by colonial auxiliaries. In 1759 British and colonial forces seized Québec; the following year they conquered Montréal, destroying French power in America. The remainder of the war, fought in Europe, the West Indies, India, Africa, and elsewhere, brought an almost unbroken sequence of British colonial victories that led to France's capitulation in 1763. Under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, France lost all its possessions on the North American mainland. The entire region east of the Mississippi and all the French holdings in what is now Canada were ceded to Great Britain. Spain, an ally of France during the war, surrendered Florida but was granted control of French territories west of the Mississippi.

The British colonies in America emerged from the French and Indian War with a very high regard both for the British empire and for their own military capabilities, which had been proved on the field of battle. Thus, the colonists were puzzled and anxious when the British government, in the aftermath of the war, began treating them with what they felt was unjustifiable harshness.

The Rise of Colonial Resistance. 

The victory over France created enormous problems for the British government. The war had virtually doubled the national public debt, and the accession of half the territory in North America had vastly compounded the problems of controlling the empire. These circumstances required new revenues, and the ruling circles in Britain believed that the colonists were best able to provide the necessary funds. Accordingly, measures to secure enforcement of the Navigation Acts were adopted by the British Parliament in 1764. To obtain additional revenue Parliament also adopted, in 1765, a Stamp Act, requiring Americans to validate various documents, transactions, and purchases by buying and applying stamps issued by the royal government.

Passage of the Stamp Act aroused widespread indignation and opposition among the American colonists, especially in Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts. Protest meetings, riotous demonstrations, and other manifestations of popular hostility occurred in practically every urban center. Nearly all officials responsible for execution of the Stamp Act were forced to resign, and many of the stamps were seized and destroyed. Secret societies of patriots calling themselves Sons of Liberty were formed in numerous communities. The intercolonial protest movement, in its political implications a mighty upsurge against taxation without representation, culminated in October 1765 in the STAMP ACT CONGRESS, (q.v.), the first important demonstration of American political unity. Parliament refused to recognize the adoption by the congress of a petition of rights, privileges, and grievances, but the Stamp Act was repealed in 1766.

After a change in leadership in the British government, the policy of imposing direct taxes on the American colonies was revived in 1767. Parliament approved a series of measures, known as the Townshend Acts, which among other things, levied modest customs duties on tea, paper, lead, paint, and glass. Colonial resistance to the Townshend Acts included boycotts of British goods, intercolonial expressions of condemnation, and, in Massachusetts, open defiance of the British government by the town of Boston and the General Court. In reply to the seditious sentiments prevalent in Massachusetts, Great Britain in 1768 transferred two regiments of troops to Boston, but this merely served to intensify anti-British feelings there. Finally, on March 5, 1770, a contingent of British soldiers fired into a hostile crowd, producing the first bloodshed of the struggle. See BOSTON MASSACRE,.

Primarily due to changed political circumstances in Britain, Parliament in 1770 repealed all the Townshend duties except the tax on tea, which was retained to uphold Britain's right to levy taxes on its subjects. The Americans then dropped all nonimportation measures except for a tea boycott, kept up to maintain their objections to taxation without representation. Relations returned to normal until 1773, when Parliament tried to save the East India Co. from bankruptcy by granting it a monopoly on tea sold in America, and thus precipitated a new crisis. The colonists, regarding the Tea Act as a measure to induce them to submit to parliamentary taxation, not only intensified the boycott but, in Boston, destroyed cargoes of tea. See BOSTON TEA PARTY,.

The American Revolution. 

Parliamentary reaction to the events in Boston was swift and harsh. By enactments adopted in March 1774, Parliament closed the port of Boston, prohibited town meetings everywhere in Massachusetts, and imposed other odious penalties. Intercolonial indignation over this legislation paved the way for convocation, in September 1774, of the First CONTINENTAL CONGRESS, (q.v.). The Congress drafted a petition to the British sovereign, George III, for a redress of grievances, called for intensification of the boycott on trade with Great Britain, and completed plans for a new Congress in May 1775, in the event of British refusal to grant its demands.

The king rejected the Congress's petition and characterized the colonial protest movement as rebellion. Less than four months after that news was received in America, armed conflict broke out in Massachusetts when the royal governor, Gen. Thomas Gage, dispatched troops against Concord, where the leaders of the resistance had concentrated arms and ammunition. On April 19, British regulars fired on a formation of patriot militia at Lexington, precipitating the first battle of the American Revolution.

The Second Continental Congress convened at Philadelphia on May 10, 1775. Although it was a purely extralegal institution, the Congress proclaimed American determination to resist British aggression with armed force, provided for establishment of a Continental army, appointed George Washington commander in chief, authorized the issuance of paper money, and assumed other prerogatives of executive authority over the colonies. Congress also appealed to the British government for a peaceful solution of the crisis, but in August, George III responded with a proclamation exhorting his “loyal subjects” to “suppress rebellion and sedition” in North America. Meanwhile, British-held Fort Ticonderoga had fallen to Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, and American troops had inflicted severe casualties on a large force of British regulars at Charlestown, Mass. (see BUNKER HILL, BATTLE OF,). Sentiment for a complete break with Great Britain and for national independence did not begin to emerge in the colonies until after the events at Bunker Hill. More than a year later, on July 2, 1776, the Second Continental Congress declared independence, and two days afterward adopted Thomas Jefferson's formal statement of principle justifying that action. For details of the struggle to preserve what the Congress had declared, see AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

THE GROWTH OF THE NATION 

Between 1776 and 1865 the American confederation would grow from 13 to 36 component states; earn the respect of foreign nations; and greatly increase in territory, population, and wealth. The young nation would also confront serious social, economic, and political problems; the two most important were whether the authority of the federal government or that of the individual states was to prevail, and to what extent the institution of slavery should be permitted to grow in the nation. The controversy over these issues became more acute as time passed and divided the country into two antagonistic sections, the North and the South. In the mid-19th century the conflict of interests, opinions, and ideals became violent enough to threaten the very existence of the Union. Diplomacy and compromise failed, and only after a 4-year civil war between the North and the South were the issues finally settled.

The Articles of Confederation. 

By winning the War of Independence, the U.S. emerged successfully from its first severe test as a nation. With the signing in Paris, in 1783, of the peace treaty with Great Britain, the nation was confronted with new problems, chief of which was devising a form of government that would bind the 13 states into a strong and efficient Union.

From 1776 to 1781 the states had been governed by the Continental Congress, which assumed certain executive powers—such as raising an army, borrowing money from foreign countries, and concluding treaties—in order to carry on the struggle against Great Britain. These powers in effect made the Congress a replacement for the king; they were codified shortly after independence, in an agreement known as the ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, (q.v.). The articles were approved by the Congress in 1777 and were ratified successively by the various states, concluding with Maryland in 1781. Maryland was slow to ratify because it lacked a colonial charter that conferred western lands upon it, and feared that other states (especially Virginia) that claimed vast western reserves would dominate the union. It agreed to enter the confederation only if all the states concerned ceded their claims to the U.S. The states involved agreed, and beginning with New York in 1781 and ending with Georgia in 1802, all made the necessary cessions.

The Lack of Central Power. 

Under the Articles of Confederation, the states explicitly retained their sovereign power, which meant that their individual legislatures remained supreme in matters of taxation and administration of justice, as provided by their own constitutions. Congress was a body in which only the states, not the people, were represented; it functioned as a large plural executive, not as a legislature. Thus, Congress could only ask the states for money to run the government, and the states might contribute or withhold funds at their pleasure. Although Congress had power to issue its own currency and to borrow money on behalf of the U.S., it had no authority over the internal finances of the states, which issued currency and borrowed money on their own. In the unstable financial climate of postrevolutionary America, these limitations on its power prevented the Congress from keeping domestic peace or inspiring respect abroad.

During the period in which the articles were in force, nationalists, such as Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, worried that rivalries between the states and social conflicts within them threatened the ability of the U.S. to survive as a political entity. Some states, such as Rhode Island, inflated their currencies to ease the condition of their farmers, suffering in the depression that had followed the Revolution; others such as Massachusetts, refused to ease the plight of the debtor class and raised taxes as a way of protecting from inflation the merchants who dominated their legislatures. In Massachusetts, this deflationary, high-tax policy led directly to a revolt by farmers, who initially resisted the authority of the state by closing the county courts, and later took up arms under the nominal leadership of a Continental Army veteran, Capt. Daniel Shays (c. 1747–1825).

The state government put down the uprising, but SHAYS' REBELLION, (q.v.) convinced nationalists that without a central government to exert authority over, and within, the states, there could be no security for persons or property. The Confederation Congress was capable of governing within the sphere it had been permitted—as demonstrated by the Ordinance of 1787, which organized the national domain, known as the NORTHWEST TERRITORY, (q.v.), between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes. In the aftermath of Shays' Rebellion, nationalists agitated for revision of the articles that would expand the government's authority.

The Constitution. 

The more ardent nationalists, including Madison and Hamilton, believed that the Articles of Confederation would have to be discarded, but it was with the intention of revising them that Congress agreed in 1787 to permit a convention of delegates from all the states to propose amendments to the system. Meeting at Philadelphia from May to September, with George Washington as its president, the convention drew up the CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, (q.v.). Much conflict took place during the convention and immediately afterward, and important compromises had to be worked out among the contending parties before the Constitution was finally adopted by the convention. In general, the Constitution laid the foundations for an efficient national union by making the people, not the states, the parties to the agreement. Largely the work of Madison, James Wilson, Roger Sherman, and other nationalist delegates, the Constitution substituted a fully articulated government of three branches—executive, legislative, and judicial—for the weak, quasi-governmental Confederation Congress.

The Constitution became the law of the land in 1788, after 9 states (the required two-thirds) had ratified it; 12 states ratified the document by the end of 1788. On March 4, 1789, the first Congress of the U.S. elected under the Constitution assembled in New York City, then the national capital. On April 30, George Washington, who had been unanimously elected the first president of the U.S., was inaugurated in New York City. (Rhode Island, which had sent no delegates to the Philadelphia convention, did not join the union until it ratified the Constitution in May 1790.)

Financial Policies. 

The most outstanding achievements during Washington's first administration belonged to his secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. At his prompting, Congress agreed to “fund” (that is, to pay interest in perpetuity on) the debt the U.S. had incurred during the American Revolution, as well as to assume responsibility for paying off the remaining debts owed by the states. These measures established the creditworthiness of the U.S. and left no doubt that the federal government was more important than any of the component states. He established the first Bank of the United States as a central financial authority, which, although privately owned, acted as fiscal agent for the government. Also as a result of Hamilton's efforts, Congress levied a tariff on imported goods and passed an excise tax on the production of whiskey, measures that provided revenues to carry his financial plans into effect.

The First Party Conflict. 

Hamilton's financial policies aroused opposition from those who felt the measures neglected the agricultural class and favored the bankers and manufacturers. The debates in Congress and elsewhere in 1790 and 1791 over Hamilton's measures revealed a distinct cleavage in the political and economic ideas of the nation, and this division soon was manifested in the formation of the first two important political parties in U.S. history: the Federalists and the Republicans (see FEDERALIST PARTY,).

Basic differences. 

The Federalists advocated a strong federal government existing to serve the national interest, guided by the educated and wealthy classes. The Republicans, whose outstanding leaders were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, believed in the ability of the common people to function as their own governmental officers and advocated strict limitation of federal powers and protection of states' rights. The Federalist party was supported by the moneyed and commercial interests, especially merchants in the northeastern cities; the Republicans were supported mainly by farmers, particularly in the South and West, and by artisans and other urban workers.

The two parties also disagreed strongly on U.S. foreign policy. Republicans sympathized with the ideology of the French Revolution, regarding it as a notable example of people striving against tyranny, and favored France over Great Britain. Federalists saw the Revolution as an example of chaotic subversion of established law and order, and favored strict neutrality. President Washington inclined toward the Federalist viewpoint and in 1793 proclaimed a policy of U.S. neutrality in the wars between Great Britain and France. Washington and his successor in the presidency, John Adams, adhered to the policy of neutrality, although both France and Britain violated U.S neutral rights and aroused the Federalists to demand war on France and the Republicans to advocate war on Great Britain. Disputes between Great Britain and the U.S. arising from the French-British wars were temporarily settled by JAY'S TREATY, (q.v.), ratified in 1795, and Adams's representatives negotiated a convention with France in September 1800 that ensured peace between that country and the U.S.

Federalists repudiated. 

In domestic matters, antagonism between Federalists and Republicans built up steadily after Federalist suppression of the so-called WHISKEY REBELLION, (q.v.) in 1794 and finally came to a head in 1798, when the Federalist-controlled Congress passed the ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS, (q.v.). These laws, designed to silence all Republican criticism of Federalist policy, struck Republicans as unconstitutional infringements on the rights of free speech and press. The Kentucky Resolutions, written by Jefferson and passed by the legislature of Kentucky, promulgated the theory of states' rights, which strictly limited the powers of the federal government and reserved to the states all powers not explicitly forbidden to them by the Constitution (see KENTUCKY AND VIRGINIA RESOLUTIONS,). The Alien and Sedition Acts provided one of the main issues in the presidential election of 1800. Jefferson's victory over Adams signified a repudiation of the Federalist theory that government should be conducted by the “rich, the well born, and the able” and a triumph for the idea that ordinary people were fit to govern themselves. The Federalist party, although it nominated presidential candidates through 1816, never again won a national election.

Jefferson's Presidency. 

Despite Federalist fears of radical reform, Jefferson left undisturbed many of the laws and institutions, such as the tariff and the Bank of the United States, that his followers had criticized. His program of simplicity and frugality in government, however, in effect dismantled the comparatively imposing national structure the Federalists had tried to construct. Under Jefferson's secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, strict economy in national expenditures was introduced; military and naval appropriations were severely cut, and 70 percent of the national revenue was applied to reducing the national debt. The most important event in Jefferson's first administration was the acquisition by the U.S. of the Louisiana territory, a vast realm encompassing the lands between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. Ceded (1762) to Spain during the French and Indian War, the land had been reacquired by France in 1800 through a secret treaty. Although one of Jefferson's cardinal political principles was that the powers of the president were strictly limited by the Constitution, and the Constitution nowhere empowers the president to purchase foreign territory, Napoleon Bonaparte's offer to sell the region for a mere $15 million was of such obvious benefit to the U.S. that in 1803 Jefferson concluded a treaty purchasing Louisiana from France. By this act, he doubled the area of the U.S. Subsequently, 14 states were wholly or partly created out of the Louisiana territory, and they added immensely to the wealth and power of the nation. See LOUISIANA PURCHASE,.

Jefferson was reelected in 1804. His second administration was marked chiefly by growing tension in foreign affairs. Both Great Britain and France in their wars against each other, which were becoming more and more intense, adopted restrictive economic measures that injured neutral, and especially U.S., commerce. To force withdrawal of these measures, Jefferson had Congress pass a number of acts designed to deprive Great Britain and France of U.S. goods and to exclude their products from the U.S.; the most important of these measures were the Non-Importation Act (1806), the Embargo Acts (1807, 1808), and the Non-Intercourse Act (1809).

The War of 1812. 

These acts, and similar measures taken in the administration of Jefferson's successor, James Madison, also a Republican, failed to change the policies of Great Britain and France and resulted in severe financial loss to U.S. merchants and shipowners. Great Britain aroused special animosity, not only because its policies damaged U.S. commerce and its officials treated U.S. diplomats rudely, but because the Royal Navy routinely stopped American merchant ships on the pretext of searching for naval deserters, and impressed many U.S. citizens into service aboard British warships. These actions aroused fervent demands for war, especially among young nationalist politicians in Congress. Reports that Britain had aided the Shawnee Indian chief Tecumseh in his efforts to resist the territorial expansion of the U.S. only intensified the war fever. President Madison hoped to resolve the crisis by diplomacy, but by June 1812 he could no longer resist congressional pressure. He sent Congress a message describing the outrages committed by Great Britain, and Congress responded with a declaration of war.

TheWAR OF 1812, (q.v.) settled none of the issues that had brought it about; the Treaty of Ghent, which brought the war to a close in 1814, merely restored prewar conditions between the belligerents. The war nevertheless had three important results in the U.S.: It created a strong feeling of national union and pride; it destroyed the national political influence of the Federalists; and it ended the dominance of American political affairs by European events.         F.An., FRED ANDERSON, Ph.D.

Era of Good Feeling. 

The strong nationalism engendered by the War of 1812 manifested itself in many ways. Congress had levied a high tariff in 1812 to raise money for the war; in 1816 it increased the already high duties of the tariff to protect the growing manufacturing industries of the nation from the great quantities of low-priced goods being imported from Great Britain. The Republican party had always been antagonistic to the Bank of the United States, and refused to renew the bank's charter after it expired in 1811. Banking as conducted by state-chartered banks, however, proved thoroughly unsound during the War of 1812, and in 1816, in order to put an end to the chaotic financial conditions then prevailing, the Republican-dominated Congress issued a charter for the second Bank of the United States. In the decade following the War of 1812, the powers of the federal government were augmented by several important decisions of the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice John Marshall, that limited various legislative and executive powers of the states. The national territory also expanded during the decade, when Spain ceded (1819) Florida (then East Florida) to the U.S.; West Florida, a strip of land along the Gulf of Mexico extending westward from East Florida to the mouth of the Mississippi River, had been forcibly annexed by the U.S. in 1810. In foreign affairs, the strong national spirit was demonstrated chiefly in the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, a statement of policy by President James Monroe that announced the determination of the U.S. to prevent any further colonization by European nations in either South or North America. The statement thus implied the U.S. would aid the South American republics, formed in the first quarter of the 19th century by revolt from Spain, in defense of their independence.

SECTIONAL RIVALRIES 

This period of strong national unity, often referred to as the Era of Good Feeling, was, however, a prelude to an era of strife between various sections of the nation over economic, social, and political issues that was destined to continue for four decades and culminate in the American Civil War. Initially, three sections of the U.S.—the West, the South, and the Northeast—which had each developed different types of economic and social life and political ideas, began to struggle with one another for control of the presidency and Congress in order to secure national policies that would promote their sectional welfare. By mid-century, however, fundamental divisions between North and South about slavery overshadowed all other issues.

Westward Migration. 

The West, the region lying west of the Allegheny Mountains, had by this time (1824) been settled by people from the seaboard colonies or states in two successive waves of migration. The first began after the region was secured to Great Britain from the French by its victory in 1763 in the French and Indian War, and then won from Great Britain during the American Revolution chiefly by the victories of American forces under George Rogers Clark; it continued to the end of the 18th century. By the last decade of the century many sections of the frontier territories had become sufficiently populated to enter the Union. Vermont, a frontier region settled chiefly by New Englanders, became a state in 1791; Kentucky, in 1792; Tennessee, in 1796; and Ohio, in 1803. The westward movement slackened during Jefferson's first administration, which was characterized by business prosperity in the East. When restrictions on business—brought about by Jefferson's prohibitive trade acts and the War of 1812—caused economic troubles in the East, beginning about 1806, the westward movement was resumed and a second wave of migration took place. It resulted in the addition to the Union of the states of Louisiana (1812), Indiana (1816), Mississippi (1817), Illinois (1818), and Alabama (1819).

Life in the frontier territories and states was laborious and dangerous. The effort to establish farms and homes on uncleared land, to repel hostile Indians, and to form communities, local governments, and finally states demanded courage, self-reliance, initiative, and endurance from the settlers. In the frontier regions, people were valued not for their ancestry or education but for their ability and willingness to work with their hands.

Cotton and the South. 

The economy and social life of the South, also an agricultural region, differed considerably from that of the West. The South was principally devoted to the growing of one crop, cotton, on large plantations with black slave labor. In contrast to the hardy, vigorous, and crude life of the people on the western frontier, the southern planters led lives characterized by aristocratic social grace and culture. Nevertheless, the West and the South, both devoted largely to agriculture, had similar interests and leaders in the early period of sectional conflict. But as time passed, the conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery and the preservation of the Union overshadowed every other sectional conflict; in this fundamental difference, the various western states took the side of the section, North or South, in which they were geographically situated.

Manufacturing and the Northeast. 

The economic life of the Northeast, comprising the New England states, New York, New Jersey, and eastern Pennsylvania, was marked in the first two decades of the 19th century by a decrease in agricultural activity, caused largely by the migration of farmers to the cheaper and more fertile lands of the West. In addition, the shipbuilding industry and foreign trade had both been nearly ruined by the economic warfare waged by Presidents Jefferson and Madison against Great Britain and by the War of 1812. Stimulated also by the new inventions and processes of the Industrial Revolution, the Northeast became a great manufacturing center. Everywhere in the region, home industries employing manual power gave way to factories using machinery driven at first by waterpower and then by steam power; and numerous small farming towns, such as Lowell, Mass., rapidly grew into industrial cities. The large cities—Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore—also began to grow at an unprecedented rate; an important contribution to their growth was made by the canals and railroads that were built at the time between West and East, giving the great trading centers easier access to the products of the West. These new means of transportation replaced the crude roads that had been almost the only means of east-west travel in the first quarter of the 19th century. The Erie Canal was completed in New York State in 1825. Railroads included the Baltimore and Ohio (started in 1828) and the Mohawk and Hudson (1830; later part of the New York Central). The Northeast was conservative in politics and social life; financial and political power in the section was held by the manufacturing and mercantile classes.

The Election of 1824. 

The conflict between the mercantile aristocracy of the Northeast, the agricultural aristocracy of the South, and the frontier democracy of the West was first manifest in the presidential election of 1824. The three principal candidates, all members of the Republican party, were John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, representing the conservative elements of the party; Andrew Jackson, born in South Carolina but at the time U.S. senator from Tennessee, leader of the democratic western frontier element and the border and southern people; and Henry Clay, born in Virginia and at the time U.S. representative from Kentucky and Speaker of the House, who was Jackson's rival for leadership of the West and South.

After a bitter campaign, no candidate had received the required majority of electoral votes, and the House of Representatives chose Adams as president, principally because Clay exerted his influence in Adams's favor. Because Jackson had received the plurality of electoral votes, his followers claimed that the election of Adams was contrary to the will of the people, and the Republican party split into two sections. One, the National Republican party, followed Adams and Clay; the other, the DEMOCRATIC-REPUBLICAN PARTY, (q.v.), was led by Jackson, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and William H. Crawford of Georgia. During Adams's administration, the supporters of Jackson maintained a campaign of criticism of the president's policies to lay a foundation for the election of Jackson in 1828.

The Tariff and Nullification. 

The principal controversy in the Adams administration involved the tariff question. The North favored a protective tariff. The South, which had advocated it in 1816, now opposed it. Since that year the exportation of cotton had increased so greatly (from 27 million kg/60 million lb in 1816 to 91 million kg/200 million lb in 1824) that the South had given up the idea of developing manufacturing industries in order to devote itself almost entirely to the cultivation of cotton. With no manufactures of its own that might benefit from a high tariff, the South objected to the high prices it would have to pay for manufactured goods under a high tariff. Southern leaders held that the levying of such a tariff taxed the economy of one section of the nation for the benefit of another section and asserted that this procedure was unconstitutional. The North, however, with its larger population, controlled Congress. In 1824, toward the close of James Monroe's second administration, Congress passed a tariff raising the average duty from the 20 percent of the Tariff of 1816 to 36 percent, and in 1828, in Adams's administration, it passed a tariff levying even higher duties. The 1828 tariff, the so-called Tariff of Abominations, excited extreme anger in the South. Various southern leaders reiterated their claim that the law was unconstitutional and reaffirmed their belief in the right of any state to disobey any laws passed by Congress in excess of its constitutional powers, as first stated in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.

The South did nothing, however, during the Adams administration to implement its declared right to nullify acts of Congress, hoping that Jackson would be elected president in 1828 and would favor a low tariff. Jackson did defeat Adams in 1828, but he disappointed the South by declaring that Congress was within its rights in levying a protective tariff, and in 1832 Congress passed a new tariff bill that was again highly protective in character. Indignation over the tariff immediately precipitated drastic action by South Carolina. A convention summoned by the legislature of that state ordered its citizens not to pay the duties imposed by the tariff law and informed the federal government that it would secede from the Union if the federal government attempted to enforce the law. Jackson refused to be intimidated. He proclaimed that no state had the right to nullify a law of the U.S., and he threatened military action in South Carolina to enforce the Tariff of 1832. Military conflict between South Carolina and the Union seemed imminent, but the issue was settled by compromise: Congress passed a new tariff law providing for a gradual reduction of duties over a period of ten years until the rates were no higher than the 1816 levels, and South Carolina canceled its Ordinance of Nullification. See NULLIFICATION,; TARIFFS, UNITED STATES..

Jackson and the Bank. 

Another violent sectional controversy in Jackson's first administration involved the Second Bank of the United States, which had been established in 1816. Jackson was hostile to the bank, charging that it unduly favored the commercial interests of the northeastern states and was inimical to those of the state-chartered banks of the West. The West supported Jackson's point of view; the Northeast and the National Republicans, in general, supported the bank. Although the charter of the bank would not expire until 1836, the bank in 1832 applied to Congress for a renewal. The application was a political maneuver by Henry Clay, who expected Jackson to oppose the renewal and then to be repudiated by the people in the forthcoming election. Congress passed a bill granting the renewal and Jackson did veto it, but in the election of 1832, in which the bank was the principal issue, Clay, candidate of the National Republican party, was overwhelmingly defeated by Jackson, who then immediately moved to destroy the bank by transferring federal funds from it to favored, or so-called pet, state banks. In the administration of Jackson's successor, Martin Van Buren, elected in 1836, Congress finally made the national government independent of the privately owned banking system of the country by the passage of the Independent Treasury Bill in 1840. The measure provided that government funds were thereafter to be deposited not in privately owned banks but in government subtreasuries created in important cities. The act was repealed in 1841, but a new measure with essentially the same provisions was passed in 1846.

The Whigs and the Democrats. 

Jackson's partisans managed his election and reelection amid great popular enthusiasm. Jackson, however, was an autocratic and arbitrary executive; he exercised such power over his cabinet and Congress that the period of his administrations is sometimes referred to as the “reign” of Andrew Jackson. Between 1834 and 1836 his enemies—including the National Republicans, northerners whom he had offended by his action against the bank, and southerners whose enmity he had incurred by his stand against nullification in South Carolina—joined to create a new political party, the WHIG PARTY, (q.v.). Several years earlier, the Democratic-Republicans, led by Jackson, had dropped the second half of the party name to become the DEMOCRATIC PARTY, (q.v.), still in existence today. The Democratic party was strong enough to elect Van Buren in 1836 but was hurt by the financial panic of 1837. Although the panic was engendered before Van Buren's administration and was caused chiefly by overspeculation in land, canals, and railroads, the ensuing business depression lasted through Van Buren's administration and so discredited the Democrats that in 1840 the Whigs elected their candidate, William Henry Harrison. Harrison died, however, a few weeks after he was inaugurated in 1841, and the vice-president, John Tyler, became president. The chief aims of the Whig party, led by Clay, were to restore the Bank of the United States and to promote a high tariff. Tyler, however, had joined the Whigs not because of his belief in their political principles but because of his enmity toward Jackson. After Congress in 1841 passed a bill to recharter the bank, Tyler vetoed it, whereupon he was read out of the Whig party.

By this time, however, issues such as the tariff and the bank, which had been the cause of sectional controversy for two decades, had been superseded by a far more fundamental sectional issue, that of black slavery. The problem had been the cause of sharp controversy since the founding of the nation, and from the fourth decade of the century to the middle of the sixth, it dominated all phases of American life.

THE DEBATE OVER SLAVERY 

The first black slaves in North America were the 20 introduced into the Virginia Colony at Jamestown in 1619. During the 17th century about 25,000 blacks were brought into the country, and slavery was legal in all the colonies. Climatic conditions in the South were most conducive to growing the crops best suited to slave labor. The demand for cheap labor to raise cotton, the principal southern crop, caused a great increase in the number of slaves in the South, especially after the production of cotton was stimulated by the invention (1793) of the cotton gin. The North gradually united in finding the institution of slavery obnoxious on both ethical and economic grounds, and by the end of the 18th century all the states north of Maryland, except New Jersey, had provided for the abolition of slavery. The U.S. Constitution, however, recognized the institution. Congress in its early days sometimes acted for and sometimes against slavery. By the Ordinance of 1787 it prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory; in 1793 it passed the Fugitive Slave Law, which permitted a slave owner to reclaim, from any locality in the U.S. and on mere proof of ownership, any slave who had escaped custody (see FUGITIVE SLAVE LAWS, ); and in 1808 Congress forbade the further importation of slaves into the U.S. Between 1791 and 1812 the Union admitted three states in which slavery was legal (Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana) and two in which slavery was prohibited (Vermont and Ohio).

Slavery and Western Expansion. 

Members from northern states had expressed little opposition in Congress to the admission of the above-mentioned slave states. The first serious sectional controversy over slavery took place when the Missouri Territory, in which slavery was legal, applied for statehood in 1818. The Missouri application for the first time aroused strong northern opposition to the admission of a slave state. Because Missouri was to be the first state lying entirely west of the Mississippi created from territory added to the Union since its formation, the opponents of slavery felt its admission as a slave state would serve as a precedent for admission of all future states on a like basis. After a lengthy and violent controversy in Congress and throughout the country, Congress enacted the MISSOURI COMPROMISE, (q.v.). Under this law, Missouri was to be admitted as a slave state, but slavery was to be prohibited in all other states to be created out of territory of the Louisiana Purchase above lat 36°30' N. Accordingly, Missouri was admitted to the Union in 1821; in the previous year, to placate the opponents of slavery, Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts since the 17th century but desired separate statehood, had been admitted as a free state.

The controversy preceding the enactment of the Missouri Compromise focused the attention of the entire country on the problem of slavery. In the North, after 1820, sentiment, based chiefly on ethical grounds, grew for the abolition of slavery, either gradually and with compensation for the slave owner or immediately and unconditionally. The South, feeling that the very basis of its economic and social order was threatened, passed stringent laws to keep its slaves under control. In 1840 it secured passage by Congress of the so-called gag resolution, providing that Congress would no longer consider any petition presented to it on the subject of slavery. The South also tried, unsuccessfully, to shut out mail circulation of antislavery literature and bitterly objected to the North's criticism of slavery. The division of national opinion on the slavery issue grew more violent through the third decade of the century and rose to a crisis in the fourth. At that time the U.S. acquired large new areas of territory in the West, and a struggle at once began between North and South over whether slavery should be permitted in those regions. The new territory comprised Texas, the Oregon region, California, and New Mexico, which then consisted of the area between California on the west and Texas on the east, and extended from the Mexican border to the southern border of Oregon.

Texas and Oregon. 

Texas was a province of Mexico until 1836, when its inhabitants, for the most part settlers from the U.S. who had migrated there in large numbers since the beginning of the 19th century, concluded a successful revolt and established the Republic of Texas. The new nation desired annexation to the U.S. The South, openly favoring enlargement of the national territory in which slavery was permitted, strongly advocated the annexation of Texas, where slavery was legal; the North opposed the annexation. President Tyler favored annexation, but Congress refused to ratify the agreement to that effect concluded between Texas and the U.S. by the secretary of state, John C. Calhoun. The question of the annexation of Texas then became involved with that of the annexation of Oregon. By virtue of exploration and settlement, both the U.S. and Great Britain claimed this region, which extended from lat 42° N and from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Agreement had been made between the two nations in 1818 (renewed in 1827) to share authority over the region. In the 1840s strong sentiment arose in the U.S. for a division of Oregon that would give the U.S. undisputed possession of all the territory south of lat 49°; some Americans insisted on the acquisition of all land south of 54°40'. The idea of annexing Oregon at this time was particularly favored by those who desired the annexation of Texas; they felt that by the addition of Oregon, in which slavery had taken no hold, the North might be won over to the annexation of Texas, a slave region.

The presidential campaign of 1844 was fought largely on the issue of the annexation of Texas and Oregon. The Democrats favored the annexations; the Whigs took an indefinite stand, especially on the annexation of Texas. Also active in this campaign was a third party, the LIBERTY PARTY, (q.v.), formed in 1839 and advocating abolition of slavery in the South. The Liberty party attracted enough Whig votes in New York and Michigan to give these two states and the election to the Democratic candidate, James K. Polk, a strong annexationist. Action on the annexations soon followed. In December 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union; in June 1846 Great Britain and the U.S. concluded a treaty extending the parallel of lat 49° N (already the boundary between the U.S. and Canada east of the Rocky Mountains) west from the Rockies to the Pacific, thus bringing under sole U.S. ownership all of Oregon south of the 49th parallel.

The Mexican War. 

The annexation of Texas brought about a dispute between the U.S. and Mexico, which had never recognized the independence of Texas. Mexico, insisting that it still expected to subdue its rebellious province, in 1846 refused to discuss with the U.S. the question of the southern boundaries of Texas and a number of other controversial matters. Feeling grew strong in both countries; each massed troops along the Rio Grande, and a raid by American troops into Mexican territory led directly to war between Mexico and the U.S. In this war the U.S. was victorious. By terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Feb. 2, 1848), Mexico, in return for $15 million, ceded California and New Mexico to the U.S. and agreed to recognize the Rio Grande as the boundary between Texas and Mexico. By a treaty negotiated in 1853 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1854, the U.S. purchased from Mexico an additional strip of territory in southern Arizona; this acquisition, known as the GADSDEN PURCHASE, (q.v.), completed the western territorial expansion of the contiguous U.S.

The struggle between South and North to introduce or prohibit slavery in the newly acquired regions had begun even before the peace treaty with Mexico was signed. To the appropriation bill for the expenses of the peace negotiations, David Wilmot (1814–68), a U.S. representative from Pennsylvania, proposed in 1846 an amendment, or proviso, prohibiting slavery in any territory to be acquired from Mexico. The WILMOT PROVISO, (q.v.) was several times passed by the House but each time defeated by the Senate; although it did not become law, it served to crystallize and attract nationwide attention to the demands of the antislavery forces regarding the status of slavery in the new territories. In retaliation, the slavery interests proposed an amendment permitting slavery for the bill organizing Oregon into a national territory; the amendment was defeated, and in 1848 Oregon became a territory in which slavery was prohibited.

California and New Mexico. 

The next important controversy over slavery took place when President Polk in 1848 urged the civil organization of California and New Mexico, which had been under U.S. military rule since 1846. Three plans concerning slavery in these areas were advanced: to permit slavery throughout California and New Mexico; to prohibit slavery throughout the two regions; or to divide each of the two into a free and a slave section by the parallel lat 36°30' N, as all of the Louisiana Purchase except Missouri had been divided. The discussion became so acrimonious that in the presidential election of 1848 the two principal political parties avoided committing themselves definitely on the issue.

The Democratic candidate, Lewis Cass, advocated permitting each territory when it applied for statehood to determine for itself whether it wished to be slave or free; Cass called his doctrine popular sovereignty. The Whigs nominated Gen. Zachary Taylor, a southerner who had never urged the extension of slavery. The balance of power in the election was held by a new party, the FREE-SOIL PARTY, (q.v.), to which most members of the Liberty party had transferred their allegiance. The Free-Soil party, like the Liberty party, opposed slavery, but unlike the latter, which urged the abolition of slavery everywhere in the U.S., the Free-Soil party opposed only the extension of slavery into the territory west of the Mississippi.

THE PRESERVATION OF THE UNION 

In the election of 1848 the Free-Soilers drew away a sufficient number of votes from the Democratic party in New York State to enable Taylor to win the state and the election. In the year following the election, the slavery and antislavery groups in Congress were so evenly divided that no solution to the problem of slavery in the newly acquired regions could be reached. At this juncture Henry Clay, in January 1850, introduced legislation that proposed a series of compromises between the demands of the two groups. After a notable series of debates in the Senate, from January to July 1850, the propositions made by Clay were passed; in their enacted form they are known as the COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850, (q.v.). They provided principally for California to be admitted to the Union as a free state; for the entire region ceded by Mexico east of California to be opened to settlement by both slaveholders and antislavery advocates; and for a new fugitive slave law, making much more effective the measures that could be taken by a slave owner to reclaim an escaped slave.

Passage of the Compromise Measures of 1850 was followed by a four-year truce in the slavery controversy. The belief grew throughout the country that the measures had permanently settled the problem of slavery. Although Democrats tended to support the compromise more than Whigs, the Democrats' overwhelming victory in the presidential election of 1852, in which Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire was elected, was as much a result of the fragmentation of the Whig party as a popular vote of confidence in the compromise. The one notable exception to its acceptance was the refusal of many people in the North to obey the Fugitive Slave Law and their persistence in helping fugitive slaves who reached the North to escape to Canada through secret routes known as the UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, (q.v.). The northern abolitionists also kept up propaganda against slavery during the period of the truce; the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1850–52) by Harriet Beecher Stowe, in which the evils of slavery were sensationally presented, was particularly influential in creating sentiment against the institution. The years of the truce were marked by great commercial prosperity in the U.S., caused principally by the discovery in 1848 of gold in California; the growth in wheat production through the extension of wheat planting in Iowa, which became a state in 1846, in Wisconsin, which became a state in 1848, and in Minnesota, which became a territory in 1849; the increase of cotton production in the South and of manufactured goods in the North; and the rapid growth of railroads, which connected the northern Mississippi River basin and the eastern states. Despite general acceptance of the compromise, however, the controversy over slavery still smoldered, and in 1854 it flared up again in a new form.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

In that year arose the question of the organization of the central part of the Louisiana Purchase. In January 1854 Stephen A. Douglas, U.S. senator from Illinois and leader of the Democratic party in the North, introduced the KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT (q.v.), which provided that the central part of the Louisiana Purchase be divided into two territories, Nebraska to the north, and Kansas to the south. Following the doctrine of popular sovereignty, the bill also stipulated that the territories' inhabitants would decide for themselves whether they desired the institution of slavery. Because this division contradicted the Missouri Compromise, provisions of that law would be repealed.

Many in the North felt that Douglas had sponsored the extension of slavery into hitherto inviolable territory because he hoped to gain the South's support as the presidential nominee of the Democratic party in 1856. Douglas, however, sought to organize the Kansas territories primarily because this would facilitate construction of a transcontinental railroad through his home state of Illinois, and repeal of the Missouri Compromise was necessary in order to gain the support of southern congressmen. When the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed in May 1854, it aroused the bitterest criticism and opposition to slavery that had yet appeared in the North. It increased resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. It also destroyed the Whig party by creating bitter antagonism between southern members who had supported the measure, and northern members who had opposed it. The act also brought about violent conflict in Kansas between abolitionist settlers who had emigrated from New England for the purpose of making Kansas a free state, and proslavery forces who invaded Kansas from the neighboring slave state of Missouri to vote in favor of slavery. The proslavery forces sacked and burned the antislavery town of Lawrence in May 1856, and in retaliation John Brown, a fanatical abolitionist, led a group who killed five proslavery adherents at Pottawatomie Creek.

Most importantly, the Kansas-Nebraska Act led directly to the formation of the REPUBLICAN PARTY, (q.v.). The founders of the party denounced slavery as an unmitigated evil and opposed its extension; they specifically demanded the repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Fugitive Slave Law. The new party won adherents by capitalizing on the increasingly prevalent belief that the small number of wealthy slaveowners, referred to as the “Slave Power,” controlled the national government. The Republicans also took advantage of the northern belief that their free labor system was inherently superior to the slave labor system of the South. The new party, however, was dominated not by abolitionists, who sought an immediate end to the institution of slavery, but by free-soilers, who sought merely to confine slavery to its existing boundaries.

The Election of 1856. 

The Republican party held its first national convention in 1856 and nominated John C. Frémont of California for president. The Democratic party chose James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, the state that many observers believed would decide the election. A third candidate, former President Millard Fillmore, was nominated by the American party, whose campaign stressed Fillmore's ability to restore sectional harmony. During the campaign the Republicans tried to focus public attention on Kansas, but the Democrats succeeded in portraying the Republicans as radicals who were bent on destroying the Union. Consequently, Buchanan carried the election. Even so, in its first national campaign, the Republican party made a remarkably good showing.

Slavery Sanctioned. 

President Buchanan hoped to end the agitation over the slavery question, but events in his administration brought the issue to a final crisis. The South won two important victories in the controversy. The Dred Scott decision (see DRED SCOTT CASE,) issued in 1857 by the U.S. Supreme Court, and the obiter dictum opinion of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney of Maryland, sanctioned the institution of slavery by declaring that slaves were property and not citizens and that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery in the territories. In December of the same year the proslavery element in Kansas managed by fraud to have the state adopt the proslavery Lecompton Constitution, and although a majority of the citizens of the territory opposed the constitution, President Buchanan recommended to the Senate that Kansas be admitted as a state under its provisions. The bill to bring this about was passed by the Senate but defeated by the House. (Kansas was finally admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861.)A series of debates in 1858 between the two aspirants for the office of senator from Illinois, Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, centered the attention of the country on the political and moral aspects of the problem of slavery. In these debates, Douglas advocated popular sovereignty; Lincoln stood for congressional control of slavery in the territories. Douglas won the election, but the debates established Lincoln as the leader of the Republican party in the West.

Lincoln Elected. 

The South now was no longer satisfied with the doctrine of popular sovereignty; its leaders demanded that Congress protect slavery wherever it existed in the country and in all the territories where it did not yet exist. Southern Democrats insisted on the endorsement of this sentiment at the party's April 1860 convention at Charleston, S.C. Northern Democrats led by Douglas won the adoption of a platform advocating popular sovereignty in the territories, however, whereupon the southern group bolted the convention. In June the regular Democrats nominated Douglas; the southern wing nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. The Republicans, with a platform hostile to slavery in the territories, nominated Abraham Lincoln. A fourth party, the CONSTITUTIONAL UNION PARTY, (q.v.), sought sectional reconciliation by taking no position on slavery and declaring support only for the Constitution, the Union, and law enforcement; its candidate was John Bell of Tennessee. Lincoln won the election, although he received less than 40 percent of the popular vote.

Secession and War. 

The election of 1860 proved that the commanding position in national affairs now belonged to the North, and the South felt that henceforth all important economic and social issues would be settled according to the principles and needs of the North. The South was especially fearful for the future of slavery. Although the Republican party declared it had no intention of interfering with slavery in the southern states, the South felt that nothing would prevent the party from becoming controlled by abolitionists intent on eliminating slavery from the Union. The election convinced the leaders of the South that thereafter the welfare of their section would not be satisfactorily protected while the southern states remained a part of the federal Union, and they immediately acted to withdraw from it. On Dec. 20, 1860, by action of the convention called by the state legislature, South Carolina seceded from the Union, and a few days later military forces of the state laid siege to the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor. The example of South Carolina was followed within a month by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, and Georgia and later by Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

On Feb. 4, 1861, delegates from six of the seceding states met at Montgomery, Ala., and formed a provisional government under the title of the CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, (q.v.). Several attempts were made to resolve by compromise the issues that were steadily driving North and South to war, but they failed. Lincoln, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, made his position clear: He did not intend to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed; at the same time, he declared that no state had the right to leave the Union as and when it pleased. On April 12, the besiegers of Fort Sumter began a bombardment of the fort, which surrendered two days later. On April 15 Lincoln called upon the loyal states for 75,000 volunteers to defend the Union. The American Civil War, often referred to in the postbellum period as the War of the Rebellion and, in the South, as the War Between the States, had begun. See CIVIL WAR, AMERICAN,.