Unless you’ve been living in a cave, or in a coma, or otherwise cut off from daily life, you know America is deeply divided, probably the most divided since the dark days of Vietnam and Watergate. Some argue it’s as bad at that mother of all divisions, the Civil War, though I’m not willing to go that far.
Throughout much of our history, Americans were divided. Take the Revolutionary War. We like to think of it as a gang of ragtag rebels banding together to pull off the impossible. It’s a beautiful image. Unfortunately, it’s far from the fact. The War of Independence was as much a civil war as it was a revolution. Roughly one-third of the colonists were Patriots, another third were Loyalists who thought King George III of the United Kingdom was A-OK, and the final third didn’t commit to either side and tried to keep their heads low until the storm blew over.
There were deep divisions during the War of 1812 (which the North supported and the South opposed) and the Mexican-American War (which the South backed and the North resisted). The country was divided over what to do with all the territory we picked up in the Spanish-American War (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines). There were even pockets of resistance during World War I. A string of political crises in between those conflicts often had citizens pitted against each other in opposing camps.
There were two glaring exceptions. One was World War II. Rarely in history has the line between good guys and bad guys been more starkly drawn. Americans knew what was at stake in 1941 and were unanimously behind the fight against fascism.
The other is less well-known. It was the period immediately after the War of 1812, and it merits a closer look.
America had been through a lot in its first 25 years. We’d survived a long war to win freedom, had tried a form of government that spectacularly failed, had a huge debate over what system should replace it, got it up and running (with all the attendant hiccups and stop-start fits you’d expect), then fought a second war where our capital was burned, and we came within a whisker of having our clock cleaned by Britain.
Yet, somehow, we made it.
Starting around 1815, Americans decided to lighten up. A newspaper editor in Boston dubbed it the Era of Good Feelings. Folks were in such a good national mood the name stuck. While it’s not as snazzy as, say, the Roaring Twenties or the Jazz Age, it certainly captured America’s mood. People set side aside the usual squabbles between Federalists and Republicans, North and South, and cities and rural areas (or, at least, they kept them in check).
To their surprise, they liked the way that felt.
Much of the credit belongs to President James Monroe. He undertook extensive Goodwill Tours around the country in 1817 and 1819. In a time when travel was slow, costly, and cumbersome, Americans liked seeing their chief executive in the flesh in their town. Monroe hammed it up by wearing a Revolutionary War uniform and tying his hair in the ponytail common back then. Add to that schtick Monroe’s personal charm and ability to make people feel at ease, which in turn made them like him. He was kind of “I Like Ike” decades before Dwight Eisenhower was born.
Admittedly, it wasn’t Utopia. For example, a severe economic downturn in 1819 caused widespread financial hardship. But no war loomed on the horizon, patriotism ran high, and politics remained relatively civil.
People felt so good about things that when Monroe sought reelection in 1820, he faced no serious opponent — thus joining George Washington as the only other president elected without opposition.
I say it’s time for an Era of Good Feelings II. Let’s dial down the rhetoric and see what happens. It feels good to feel good. Let’s give our frayed nerves a rest by treating one another with the respect and dignity we all deserve.
A caveat: While Americans enjoyed roughly nine pleasant years, the Era of Good Feelings abruptly ended with the 1824 presidential election, considered one of the nastiest ever. But don’t worry; we’ve already got that part down.
J. Mark Powell (@JMarkPowell) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a former broadcast journalist and government communicator. His weekly offbeat look at our forgotten past, “Holy Cow! History,” can be read at jmarkpowell.com.
