The United States mint established. 
        Free coinage. 
        Bimetallism. 
        Coins struck. 
        Federal money comes slowly into use. 
    State Banks. 
        What led to the chartering of state banks. 
        Their rapid increase. 
        Effect of the expiration of the charter of the Bank of the
          United States. 
        General suspension in 1814. 
        Reason for chartering the second Bank of the United States.

CHAPTER XX

SETTLEMENT OF OUR BOUNDARIES

%291.  Monroe inaugurated.%—­The administration of Madison ended on March 4, 1817, and on that day James Monroe and Daniel D. Tompkins were sworn into office.  They had been nominated at Washington in February, 1816, by a caucus of Republican members of Congress, for no such thing as a national convention for the nomination of a President had as yet been thought of.  The Federalists did not hold a caucus; but it was understood that their electors would vote for Rufus King for President.[1]

[Footnote 1:  In 1816 there were nineteen states in the Union (Indiana having been admitted in that year), and of these Monroe carried sixteen and King three.  The inauguration took place in the open air for the first time since 1789.]

[Illustration:  on the right of the previous paragraph, with caption “James Monroe”]

%292.  Death of the Federalist Party.%—­The inauguration of Monroe opens a new era of great interest and importance in our history.  From 1793 to 1815, the questions which divided the people into Federalists and Republicans were all in some way connected with foreign countries.  They were neutral rights, Orders in Council, French Decrees, impressment, embargoes, non-intercourse acts, the conduct of England, the insolence of the French Directory, the triumphs and the treachery of Napoleon.  Every Federalist sympathized with England; every Republican was a warm supporter of France.

But with the close of the war in 1815, all this ended.  Napoleon was sent to St. Helena.  Europe was at peace, and there was no longer any foreign question to divide the people into Federalists and Republicans.  This division, therefore, ceased to exist, and after 1816 the Federalist party never put up a candidate for the presidency.  It ceased to exist not only as a national but even as a state party, and for twelve years there was one great party, the Republican, or, as it soon began to be called, the Democratic.

%293.  The “Era of Good Feeling."%—­A sure sign of the disappearance of party and party feeling was seen very soon after Monroe was inaugurated.  In May, 1817, he left Washington with the intention of visiting and inspecting all the forts and navy yards along the eastern seaboard and the Great Lakes.  Beginning at Baltimore, he went to New York, then to Boston, and then to Portland; where he turned westward, and crossing New Hampshire and Vermont to Lake Champlain, made his way to Ogdensburg, where he took a boat to Sacketts Harbor and Niagara, whence he went to Buffalo, and Detroit, and then back to Washington.