1823

__________ 

“A concert of powers.” 

President Monroe.

__________

Children on Christmas morning, 1823.

AFTER 1822, the historian Harry Ammon says presidential politics led to an end to any “Era of Good Feelings,” to be replaced by an “Era of Bad Feelings,” with Monroe caught in the middle. At one point, when he was accused of profiting from the financial misdeeds of Col. Samuel Lane, Commissioner of Public Buildings, the Mr. Monroe erupted in a letter: 

    Every kind of malignant effort is made to annoy me, by men of violent passions, some of whom are very ignorant, and others little restrained by principle. I have pursued my system of policy steadily, relying on the support of the nation, and treating every attack of a personal nature with contempt and scorn. I shall persevere in this to the end of my term, and be happy, when I can retire, beyond their reach in peace to my farm. (24/535)

 

* 

The Monroe Doctrine.

MONROE feared the European “concert of powers,” which had organized to suppress liberal uprisings against “legitimate” rulers: Such as, kings, queens, emperors, empresses, czars, and czarinas. 

August 20: The British made the following proposal to the Monroe administration. The two nations would announce: 

1.    We conceive the recovery of the Colonies by Spain to be hopeless.

 

2.    We conceive the question of recognition of them, as independent States, to be one of time and circumstances.

 

3.    We are, however, by no means disposed to throw any impediment in the way of an arrangement between them and the mother country by amicable negotiation.

 

4.    We aim not at the possession of any portion of them ourselves.

 

5.    We could not see any portion of them transferred to any other power within difference. (24/477)

 

    According to Ammon, Adams believed Cuba “would fall into the hands of the United States by a kind of continental law of gravitation,” and so was reluctant to agree to Point 4.

 

* 

AFTER YEARS of arbitration, with both the United States and Great Britain having agreed to abide by the decision of the czar, a matter of compensation is decided. The British will pay $1.2 million for slaves carried away during the War of 1812.

* 

September 22: Joseph Smith claims that on this date, directed by an angel named Moroni, he goes to a spot on a hill near Palmyra, New York, and uncovers a stone box. Inside are golden plates, covered in strange hieroglyphics. The angel would not allow him to take the golden plates – so Smith says he returned annually, until 1827. On his four visit he was allowed to take the tablets home, and translated them, he said, and from these we have The Book of Mormon. 

    From the book would come the basic tenets of what would later become the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, commonly called the “Mormons.”

Smith sees the angel Moroni for the first time.

 

* 

THE RIVALRIES of various politicians begin to percolate. Andrew Jackson is soon convinced that Monroe is trying to harm his prospects for 1824. A rumor is spread that Monroe might seek a third term and use the military to assure victory. The president still dreams of eliminating parties.

 

* 

IN THE 1823-1824 SESSION of Congress, President Monroe ended up in a battle with the Georgia delegation – who yearned to remove all Indians from state lands. 

    Ammon writes, 

    Monroe was much more advanced in his thinking on Indian affairs than most of his contemporaries. Believing, as he had stated in his annual message of 1817, that the Indians must be given individual plots of land if they were to be induced to abandon their nomadic habits, he instructed Governor Lewis Cass of the Northwest Territory to make such grants to those Indians declining to be moved West of the Mississippi. The Senate, quite unmoved by these generous aspirations, struck out all grants in fee simple made in treaties negotiated with the Indians in 1817.

 

Ammon notes that tactics used to drives natives from their lands included “bribery, intimidation, negotiations with tribal minorities or with groups which had no claim to the land.” Jackson, for example, forced the Creeks to cede 23,000,000 acres, as punishment for attacking settlers.

 

*

NOTE TO TEACHERS: It might interest your students to know that this poem, which many of them have heard, is two hundred years old. Children haven’t changed much in the last two centuries.

December 25: Clement Clarke Moore publishes a poem which is still popular today:

 

A Visit from St. Nicholas 

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds;

While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,

Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap,

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,

I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I flew like a flash,

Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,

Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,

When what to my wondering eyes did appear,

But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,

With a little old driver so lively and quick,

I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!

On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!

Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up to the housetop the coursers they flew

With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too –

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes – how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly

That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,

And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,

And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,

And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight –

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

 

    When not writing poems for Christmas, Moore was a Professor of Oriental (as then called) and Greek Literature, as well as Divinity and Biblical Learning. He later published a two-volume Hebrew and English Lexicon. 

(See also: 1804.)