[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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