The Era of Good Feeling Dbq

The years 1815-1825 were a time period of unification and sectionalism. The term “Era of good Feeling”, can be applied to Nationalism, but not the idea of Sectionalism. At this time we had no political parties, giving political icon’s the ability to discuss objectives freely with one another. With the North being a free state, and the South being a slave state, it caused tension between the two areas, debating if slavery was the “right” thing to do, or if slavery was the “wrong” thing to do.
United States nationalism was at a strong high point after the War of 1812. We had successfully defeated the British for the second time, and had every right to have pride in our developing country. The Federalist party was then removed, leaving us with no political parties. Without these political parties, ideas could be expressed openly to anyone, people still had beliefs of course, but could be more open to everyone’s ideas, and not just the people in their party. John C. Calhoun stated in congress, “Let us, then, bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space” (Doc. B). These were the lengthy internal improvements that needed to be made in order for us to sustain our rapidly growing population. This was our way to stay powerful and keep from becoming a, “disunion”. It also gave us quicker traveling times, and a more efficient way of importing goods to the U.S, or exporting goods elsewhere. The 4th of July celebration in 1819 was truly a perfect display of nationalism (Doc. C). It was everyone gathered together to celebrate our country's independence. We had a large group of people together just happy and enjoying the prosperous nation we were beginning to have. The Monroe Doctrine was a way of the U.S saying, we are extremely powerful, confident, and will not tolerate any countries trying to settle in North or South America (Doc. H).
Sectionalism didn’t really go with the time period of the “Era of good feeling.” We had the