The “Era of Good Feelings” is usually sold as a moment of national calm — a post-War of 1812 breather before Jacksonian chaos. But when the boom ends, that calm turns out to be thin. In 1819, the United States hits its first nationwide capitalist crash. Credit evaporates, paper money destabilizes, foreclosures spread, and debtors’ prisons fill — while the institutions most responsible for the speculation often survive intact. Americans called it “hard times,” and their reactions exposed something deeper than economics: a new, bitter argument over who the market was for, and who it was allowed to crush. In this episode (Sellers, The Market Revolution, Chapter 5 — Part 1), we cover: The mechanics of the Panic: cotton prices, credit contraction, and the Second Bank’s reversal “Hard times” on the ground: unemployment, foreclosure, liquidation, debtors’ prison Why the West imploded hardest — and why the Bank of the U.S. became the era’s perfect villain The Missouri Crisis (Tallmadge Amendment → Compromise) reigniting sectional power conflict South Carolina’s turn toward radical states’ rights (and the early logic of nullification) The Marshall Court “offensive”: Cohens, Osborn, and Gibbons — and Virginia’s backlash Tariffs, taxes, and the hard-times Congress: who wants what from the federal government Internal improvements and implied powers: Monroe and Calhoun’s developmental pivot The cultural pressure of market life: time discipline, consumer goods, and strained authority The Second Great Awakening as democratic revolt — and moral protest against market values Popular politics gets sharper: debtor relief, anti-bank campaigns, and the rise of militant democracy Western experiments with relief banks and state paper — and the constitutional collision that follows Guiding question: How did Americans respond to the Panic of 1819 — and what did those responses reveal about regional identity, political power, and the emerging culture of market capitalism?

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Chapters 00:00 — Cold open: “hard times” and the first crash lesson 01:21 — Welcome + sources (Sellers / Howe / textbooks) 02:14 — Guiding question 03:13 — Howe explains the mechanics of the Panic (cotton, credit, the BUS) 06:36 — What “hard times” looked like: cities, unemployment, debtors’ prison 09:16 — The West collapses: “jaws of the monster” and the BUS as landlord 10:12 — The crash ends the “Era of Good Feelings” 10:28 — Missouri crisis erupts: Tallmadge Amendment and sectional realization 13:16 — Missouri Compromise and the “fire bell in the night” 14:34 — Fear of revolt + colonization logic (“wolf by the ears”) 16:06 — South Carolina distress → tariff anger → radicalization 18:34 — Marshall Court supremacy: Cohens, Osborn, Gibbons 20:57 — Virginia backlash: Roane (“Algernon Sidney”) + John Taylor of Caroline 21:49 — Hard-times Congress: tariffs, taxes, and competing demands 23:30 — Debtor relief + the Land Act of 1820 25:01 — Internal improvements + implied powers (Monroe/Calhoun pivot) 26:39 — General Survey Act and the infrastructure state 28:11 — Cultural pressure: time discipline, consumption, “keeping up” 30:17 — Second Great Awakening and democratic evangelicalism 32:01 — Evangelical protest against market values 34:36 — Popular discontent: banks, specie suspension, and “dictatorships” 35:54 — Debtor relief reforms: Branch, Snyder, Crockett 36:48 — Western radicalism: paper money, relief schemes, court crackdowns 38:16 — Democratic politics hardens: parties, populists, performance 39:51 — Crockett vs demagoguery 40:35 — Bank war politics in the West: relief banks and anti-BUS measures 43:44 — Closing + contact00:00 — Cold open: “hard times” and the first crash lesson

Think America’s current immigration freak-out is some unprecedented modern breakdown?

Nope. It’s one of our oldest political habits. In this episode of Past Is Prologue, John walks through the “greatest hits” of American immigration panic — from 1798 and the Alien & Sedition Acts, to the Know-Nothings, Chinese exclusion, the 1920s quota system, post–World War II crackdowns, the 1965 pivot, and the modern era where immigration stays permanently “unsolved” because an unsolved problem is a renewable political weapon.

The point: these panics are never just about immigration. They’re about power — who gets to define what “America” is, whose culture counts, whose labor is welcomed when it’s cheap, and whose presence becomes a “crisis” the moment it becomes politically useful. If you’ve ever wondered why America keeps replaying the same immigration fights — and why the people shouting the loudest never seem interested in solving anything — this episode lays out the pattern clearly.

🎧 Prefer audio? Search “How the HELL Did We Get Here?” anywhere you get podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-the-hell-did-we-get-here/id1765781522 Please subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@HowtheHellDidWeGetHerePodcast/videos?sub_confirmation=1 Chapters (locked to transcript)

📌 CHAPTERS 00:00 — Cold open: America’s oldest panic button 01:38 — What this episode covers 02:19 — 1790s setup: fragile republic, France/Britain, factions 06:06 — Alien & Sedition Acts: “national security” as pretext 08:10 — 1840s–50s: Irish/German immigration and the Know-Nothings 10:56 — Religion + culture as the real fuel 12:45 — Chinese immigration, panic, and exclusion 14:21 — Chinese Exclusion Act: race becomes federal law 17:06 — 1890s–1920s: empire, WWI, “storm-cellar isolationism” 19:41 — Red Scare + immigrants as “foreign subversion” 21:21 — Immigration Act of 1924: quotas and “dead-bolting the entryway” 22:57 — WWII and labor demand: Bracero Program 23:58 — Operation Wetback and mid-century whiplash 24:49 — 1965: new system, new backlash 27:29 — 2000s–present: permanent crisis politics 28:24 — Trump era + family separation 31:30 — The pattern, takeaways, and closing

#AmericanHistory #Immigration #USHISTORY #PastIsPrologue #HistoryPodcast #immigrationpolicy #ChineseExclusionAct #KnowNothings #AlienAndSeditionActs #ImmigrationAct1924 #1965ImmigrationAct #LaborHistory #PoliticalHistory #culturalhistory #RaceAndPolitics #HistoryExplained #Education #educational #history #historyfacts #podcast

The “Era of Good Feelings” is usually sold as a victory lap after the War of 1812 — unity, calm, and confidence in the American experiment.

But if you zoom in, it’s less a victory lap than a stress test.

Republican leaders are trying to build the tools of national development — banks, internal improvements, professional administration — while ordinary voters are demanding the opposite: lower taxes, smaller government, fewer insiders cashing in.

And that contradiction matters, because it becomes the political atmosphere in which the first nationwide capitalist downturn — what Americans called “hard times” — hits in 1819.

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In this episode (Sellers, The Market Revolution, Chapter 4 — Part 1), we cover:

Why the Salary Act of 1816 sparked a democratic backlash and a reform frenzy

How Congress went after Andrew Jackson’s Florida invasion — and accidentally boosted his populist appeal

Why New York becomes the key case study: the Bucktails, DeWitt Clinton, and Van Buren’s party machine

The 1821 New York constitutional fight: expanded white male democracy + intensified racial exclusion

Virginia’s reform battles: western voters vs the Tidewater elite — and Jefferson edging toward a more pragmatic democracy

The Old Republican counterattack on capitalism: Macon, John Taylor of Caroline, and the contradictions of planter politics

The Missouri crisis detonates: Tallmadge, Rufus King, sectional power, and the first clear North/South alignment

A speculative boom built on easy credit: exploding bank charters, corporate charters, and financial overreach

The Second Bank’s failures and tightening credit — the setup for the Panic of 1819 (continued next episode)

Guiding question:

How did the post–War of 1812 developmental state provoke a democratic backlash — and why did that backlash, rather than stopping the Market Revolution, reshape it and set the stage for the crisis of 1819?