[In honor of
this once-in-four-years
phenomenon, I wanted to highlight and AmericanStudy a few interesting leap
years from American history.]
On significant
global, cross-cultural, and national trends within a single year.
You would think that
a catastrophic historic phenomenon wherein the eruption of a volcano caused a
drastic shift in global temperatures for an entire year would be at least somewhat
well known. But speaking for myself, I only learned about the “Year
without a Summer”—in which the record-breaking 1815
eruption of Indonesia’s Mount Tambora caused severe climate change and
freezing temperatures throughout 1816, leading to the even more evocative
nickname “Eighteen
Hundred and Froze to Death”—just over a year ago, while researching this
post on the Panic of 1819. But whether we remember it now or not, this
global catastrophe had drastic effects throughout the world in 1816, including
a number of important ones in the United States (along with the arc that culminated
in the aforementioned 1819 panic): from the failure
of corn crops throughout New England to the mass migrations to the Midwest
that led to statehood for Indiana
(in 1816) and Illinois (in 1818) to the eventual founding of the Mormon Church
(as Joseph Smith’s family were one of countless residents who left Vermont farms
during this year, in their case moving to the community of Palmyra, NY that would
be so
foundational in his personal and spiritual journey).
It’s hard to
imagine that any other 1816 story could be as significant as that global and
catastrophic one, but of course the year featured many other American events,
including ones that likewise influenced ongoing histories and trends. A number
of them reflected the complicated, evolving Early Republic relationship between
the US government and Native American nations. For the first few decades after
the Constitution, the federal government dealt with native nations in individual
and distinct ways, treating them as the unique communities they were, and 1816
saw an exemplary (if as ever
fraught) such moment: the August signing of the
Treaty of St. Louis between the US government and the nations within the Three
Fires Confederacy (the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi). Yet another 1816
treaty foreshadowed the drastic and tragic change in these US-native
relationships: on March
22 the federal government signed a treaty with the Cherokee, agreeing to
return land that had been illegally seized as part of an 1814 conflict between
the US and the Creek nation; but General
Andrew Jackson, who had been involved in that 1814 war, refused to honor
the treaty, a blatant step toward his eventual, exclusionary presidential policy
of Indian Removal.
Jackson would not
be elected president until 1828, but 1816 saw its own influential presidential
election (as has every
American Leap Year since 1788). In that contest, James Monroe, who had been
serving as Secretary
of State in the administration of his fellow Virginian founder James
Madison, received the Democratic-Republican nomination and handily bested the Federalist
nominee, New York Senator (and also a Constitution signer) Rufus
King. The size of Monroe’s victory was due in part to a splintering and
disappearing Federalist Party: King would be the party’s last presidential
nominee, and for the next few years the US had only one national political
party, leading to the nickname “The
Era of Good Feelings.” As I wrote in that hyperlinked post, there were of course
tensions and divisions beneath that seeming unity, and many of them would coalesce
ahead of Jackson’s 1828 election. Yet for at least a decade, the United States
became a one-party system, another striking legacy of this important Leap Year.
Next leap year
studying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Thoughts on
this year or other leap years that stand out to you?
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