After the war, the decline of the Federalist Party produced the socalled Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe. Political conflict did not disappear. Congress chartered a Second Bank of the United States, adopted a protective tariff and debated federal support for internal improvements. Nationalists argued that roads and canals could bind distant regions into one economy.
MARSHALL’S NATIONAL CONSTITUTION
The Supreme Court strengthened federal authority in decisions such as McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), which upheld the national bank and denied states the power to tax it, and Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), which broadly interpreted federal power over interstate commerce. The Court helped convert the Constitution into an effective framework for national economic development.
THE MONROE DOCTRINE
In 1823, Monroe declared that the American continents were no longer open to European colonization and warned against European intervention in newly independent Latin American states. In return, the United States would generally avoid European political conflicts. The doctrine initially depended more upon British naval power than American military strength, but later generations expanded it into a broad claim of hemispheric influencesometimes at the expense of Latin American sovereignty.
“The United States opposed European empire in the hemisphere while developing continental ambitions of its own.
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