The National Spirit and Market Revolution

    QUESTION:

Historians have traditionally labeled the period after the War of 1812 the “Era of Good Feelings.” Evaluate the accuracy of this label, considering the emergence of nationalism and sectionalism.

        The label for the period after the War of 1812, The Era of Good Feelings, was true in considering to certain aspects of America. Even though there were some major problems, the Era of Good Feelings applied to the strong sense of nationalism. Evidently the issues on the tariff, foreign policy, political parties, slavery and national bank represented a greater national gap.

When Monroe became president the nation’s expectations were very high. After defeated the British in two major wars, American was slowly but surely becoming a strong power. America reached a high, socially and people became more dedicated to keep the union.

            There was a sense of separation between the north and south but Monroe and John Quincy Adams made it evident that there wasnt separation because Monroe won all electoral votes except for one. The only distinction was the North hated slavery and the abolitionists began to become stronger. South supported slavery and while new states were being added they wanted them to allow slavery as well. This also became a problem but was settled by the Missouri Compromise, which made it a slave state but all states above the 36 30 line. Thomas Jefferson saw this as a problem stating that “a geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political, once conceived and held up to the angry possessions of men will never be obliterated and every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper. The industrial economy of the North and the agrarian economy of the South was difference between the two. The main problem created by this tension was the economic policies of the nation and as John Randolph pointed out to the Congress in 1816. The Bank of U.S. was now functioning with the loans of British investors.
      During the early 1800's France and Britain were at war and for many years America remained neutral. But, Great Britain began seizing American ships and impressing the Americans into the British Navy. In addition, Great Britain was supplying the Native Americans in North America with guns and, as a result America declared war on Britain in 1812. The phrase "Era of Good Feelings" was used to describe the administrations of Munroe in 1816 but the validity of this phrase is questioned. Many people might believe that the period after the war of 1812 was an "Era of Good Feelings" because of the nation's gain of nationalism and expansion of the country, but it was not because of growing sectionalism and state issues. After the War of 1812, America gained a pride from winning the war known as nationalism. This pride caused them to feel inferior to other countries such as Great Britain.

       This is pointed out in Document H when it is mentioned that Munroe was not willing to be subordinate to Great Britain. Another example of this would be the Monroe Doctrine that was a warning to the European states to stay out of the Western Hemisphere or else they would have to deal with America. Moreover, Document C shows the country celebrating the Fourth of July in a happy spirit. In addition, during the War of 1812, Americans defeated many Native Americans in the west which opened up land for the Americans leading to the Westward Expansion seen in Document E. This expansion was essential because southerners needed more land to grow cotton and tobacco and it also helped citizens with economic difficulties from the Embargo Act that put a tax on goods from Great Britain before the war. Furthermore, with the creation of the American System by Henry Clay, revenues from the tariffs went towards building roads and canals that were needed by the country stated by John Calhoun in Document B.

The Thawing of the Cold War

         QUESTION:     

Compare and contrast the Cold War foreign policies of TWO of the following presidents.

Harry Truman (1945–1953)

Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961)

Richard Nixon (1969–1974)

           Right after World War II the US and the USSR started having ideological and political disputes over territories and communism. This became a full blown Cold War when Berlin was blockaded by the Soviets, but was aided by America with an airlift. As Winston Churchill said “an iron curtain had descended between the East and the West, communist and non-communist. Both Dwight D Eisenhower and Richard Nixon had different ways of dealing with the pose threat in America. Eisenhower had a policy of brinkmanship, while Richard Nixon believed in a state of detente. However, both believed that communism should be contained and that the United States must come out of the war as a victor.

              When Eisenhower became president, he had a specific policy to follow. Brinkmanship was the iea of constantly putting the enemy on edge. The use or possession of nuclear weapons would serve as both a threat an a  deterrent to the enemy. This was also known as “Mutually Assured Destruction”. In addition, under Eisenhower, America was spurred on an arms race, especially when the Soviets launchedSputnik. From then on, America raced to build weapons, and further technology in order to go into space. Ultimately, this was achieved in Kennedy’s presidency, where the Apollo Project sent man to the moon. Under Eisenhower, the US was constantly competing with the USSR to ensure that it would always have the upper hand. Falling behind would only mean failure an potentially destruction.

             Nixon’s approach to the Civil War was very different. Instead of threatening constantly, he decided on diplomacy.Nixon broke barriers when he went to China in what is known as the ping-pong diplomacy. The fact that Nixon went to China shows his willingness to compromise, since the United States hadn’t even recognized China because of its communist ideology. The visit was also a brilliant idea because it put the Russians in a bad spot; the USSR and China were not very fond of each other, so also having good relations with China also meant having good negotiations with the Soviets. Nixon and the leader of Russia, worked out an arguement called the SALT I treaty. This limited the amount of nuclear arms on both side, which ended tensions considerably and put the two superpowers at a detente. In other words, the United States and the Soviet Union coexisted and somewhat peacefully; although underlying tensions did exist, the surface was calm. Nixon’s diplomatic approach was suitable for the time.

            Although both presidents had their differences in foreign policy, they were quite similar in that both believed in the stop of communism. Eisenhower, a war general, had little qualms about containing communism for the purpose of covert operation. Nixon, too, was not afraid to use force. Having been a member of the anti-communist HUAC, he strongly believed in stopping it.Though Nixon had stated that America was beginning “Vietnamization”, or the gradual replacement of American troops with South Vietnam ones, he actually increased military presence to the many wars and secret attacks, Congress did pass the War Powers Act to limit the president, but Nixon still pushed for a no anti-communist agenda

Vietnam Blog

DANIEL ELLSBERG

Ellsberg's primary responsibility for the Defense Department was to craft secret plans to escalate the war in Vietnam—plans he says he personally regarded as "wrongheaded and dangerous" and hoped would never be carried out. Nevertheless, when President Lyndon Johnson chose to ramp up American involvement in the conflict in 1965, Ellsberg moved to Vietnam to work out of the American Embassy in Saigon evaluating pacification efforts along the front lines. He eventually left Vietnam in June 1967 after contracting hepatitis.

When the Times was slapped with an injunction ordering a stop to publication, Ellsberg provided the Pentagon Papers to the Washington Post and then to 15 other newspapers. The case, entitled New York Times Co. v. The United States, ultimately went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which on June 30, 1971 issued a landmark 6-3 decision authorizing the newspapers to print the Pentagon Papers without risk of government censure.

Not specifically because Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers—which covered only the period up to 1968 and therefore did not implicate the Nixon administration—but rather because they feared, incorrectly, that Ellsberg possessed documents concerning Nixon's secret plans to escalate the Vietnam War including contingency plans involving the use of nuclear weapons, Nixon and Kissinger embarked on a fanatical campaign to discredit him. An FBI agent named G. Gordon Liddy and a CIA operative named Howard Hunt—a duo dubbed "the Plumbers" wiretapped Ellsberg's phone and broke into the office of his psychiatrist, Dr. Lewis Fielding, searching for materials with which to blackmail Ellsberg. Similar "dirty tricks" by "the Plumbers" eventually led to Nixon's downfall in the Watergate scandal.

For leaking the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was charged with theft, conspiracy and violations of the Espionage Act, but his case was dismissed as a mistrial when evidence surfaced about the government-ordered wiretappings and break-ins.

THE MY LAI MASSACRE

On this day in 1968, a platoon of American soldiers brutally kill between 200 and 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, one of a cluster of small villages located near the northern coast of South Vietnam.During the Vietnam War, U.S. troops frequently bombed and shelled the province of Quang Ngai, believing it to be a stronghold for forces of the National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, or Viet Cong (VC).

In March 1968, a platoon of soldiers called Charlie Company received word that Viet Cong guerrillas had taken cover in the Quang Ngai village of Son My. Led by Lieutenant William L. Calley, the platoon entered one of the village's four hamlets, My Lai 4, on a search-and-destroy mission on the morning of March 16. Instead of guerrilla fighters, they found unarmed villagers, most of them women, children and old men.

The soldiers had been advised before the attack by army command that all who were found in My Lai could be considered VC or active VC sympathizers, and told to destroy the village. Still, they acted with extraordinary brutality, raping and torturing villagers before killing them and dragging dozens of people, including young children and babies, into a ditch and executing them with automatic weapons.

              The massacre reportedly ended when an Army helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire if they continued their attacks.The events at My Lai were covered up by high-ranking army officers until the following March, when one soldier, Ron Ridenhour, heard of the incident secondhand and wrote about it in a letter to President Richard Nixon, the Pentagon, the State Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and various congressmen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHk4TGWx0ZM