Regional Differences

I. Balance of Political Power

1800 evenly split power between New England and South

• New England states and its dominant Federalist Party controlled about half of the seats in Congress and only lost the 1800 election by 8 electoral votes.

• Western settlers were non-factor in 1800 whereas by 1840 more than half of the population lived west of the Allegheny Mountains

◦ 1800 center of population was near Washington D.C.

◦ 1840 center of population was west of Pittsburgh

Shift of Political Power from eastern seaboard states to states across the “mountains”

• Split up of the previously dominant Democratic Republican Party into regional parties in 1824

• steady increase in citizens eligible to vote

• rapid increase in voter participation from 25% in 1824 to 78% in 1840

• 1828 election of Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, was first President from a Western state

Louisiana Purchase in 1804 and Florida Purchase Treaty of 1819

• Louisiana Territory provided great agrarian basin for Western expansion

• Florida Purchase consolidated United States control of the southeast of North America

Henry Clay support of the American System (1824)

Feature of American system

• strong banking system to supply easy credit – Bank of the United States in 1816

• protective tariff for New England manufacturing

• tariff funds to bankroll new networks of roads and canals

◦ foodstuffs and raw materials would flow east and north

◦ manufactured goods would flow south and west

Opposition to American System

• Republicans did not want the federal government to build interstate transportation systems as that would concentrate too much power in the Federal government; they preferred that states control transportation projects

• New England did not want the American population to increase in the West and thus create competing states

Rapid population expansion in the West

• Nine new states were formed in the West by 1819

• facilitated by the new road networks and steamboat navigation of the rivers

• Land Act of 1819 provided cheap acreage to the Western settlers

Sectional Balance on Slavery

• Missouri Compromise of 1820

◦ Kept the balance in the Senate of slave and non-slave states

▪ prior to Missouri's request for statehood there were 11 slave states and 11 non-slave states

▪ Maine was admitted as a free-soil state

▪ Missouri was admitted as a slave state

◦ Slavery was banned north of the southern border of Missouri

Shift by region in position on Trade and Tariffs

• Northeast

◦ Opposed to tariffs through the War of 1812 as it crippled their shipping industry and trade with England

◦ After development of wool and textile industries in Northeast, favored high tariffs to protect