Jefferson’s second term was beset by foreign problems that culminated eventually in the War of 1812, during James Madison’s administration. Despite George Washington’s advice in his Farewell Address to stay out of entangling foreign alliances, America could not avoid being affected by events abroad. She was caught between the hammer and the anvil during Napoleon’s wars with the rest of Europe. The War of 1812 settled no issues but, soon afterward, the main Anglo-American problems left over from the Revolution were adjusted. Napoleon’s downfall at Waterloo removed France as an obstacle to American development. The period known as the “Era of Good Feeling” followed the War of 1812. During the two terms of James Monroe, internal matters were the main concern of the country: tariffs, banking, domestic improvements, the admission of new states into the Union. With the Monroe Doctrine, which warned Europe to respect the independence of Latin America, the United States began to emerge as a power in the world. Even more important was the appearance of storm warnings heralding the eventual coming of the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise, which drew a line between slave and free territory, established an uneasy truce between the North and the South. By the time John Quincy Adams became the sixth President, sectionalism was rapidly developing, and the balance of power between the East and the West, the industrial North and the agricultural South, was beginning to shift. The two-party system, which had largely disappeared with the collapse of the Federalists in 1800, was revived. In 1828 the long monopoly that Virginia and Massachusetts had enjoyed in supplying American Presidents came to an end with the election of Andrew Jackson of Tennessee and a new era began. The selections in this booklet reflect most of the significant events of these years from 1801 to 1829. The Louisiana Purchase, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the War of 1812, the Missouri Compromise, all are represented. In addition we have included accounts of some small events and background descriptions which give the flavor of the age. A proper notion of this period requires not only a knowledge of the major issues, such as understanding the Embargo Act or the significance of the _Marbury_ vs. _Madison_ decision, but also an appreciation of the quality of the experience of being an American in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Hence we have used such documents as Lorenzo Dow’s diary describing the life of a frontier preacher and Morris Birkbeck’s account of settling in Illinois.