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?

Older generations have been dragging “kids these days” for at least 2,000 years. From Cicero whining about Roman youth to boomers roasting Gen Z on TikTok, the script barely changes: lazy, entitled, soft, ruining the country.

In this episode, I walk through how every major wave of change in American history – the Market Revolution, the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, the Jazz Age, the 1960s, all the way up to millennials and Gen Z – turns into a moral panic about young people, instead of an honest look at how the economy, technology, and power structures are shifting.

In this episode of Past Is Prologue, we cover:

Why Cicero was already complaining about “arrogant, disrespectful” youth

How the Market Revolution made young people leave the family farm – and got them blamed for “moral decay”

The Gilded Age city, youth culture, and the panic over saloons, dance halls, and “easy pleasure”

Progressive Era reformers, suffrage, unions, and why older elites called them naive radicals

The Jazz Age, flappers, cars, jazz, and the birth of modern “youth culture”

The 1960s/70s: civil rights, Vietnam, hippies, and the classic “generation gap”

Millennials and Gen Z: student debt, housing, climate anxiety, gig work, and why “nobody wants to work anymore” is a dodge

The 5-step pattern: world changes → youth adapt → olds feel loss → blame the kids → then become the next round of scolds

Why generational warfare is a convenient distraction from policy failure, inequality, and corporate power

Key question: when someone says “this generation is going to destroy America,” what’s really changed in the world they inherited – and who benefits from blaming the kids instead of the system?

If you’re Gen Z, millennial, or just trying not to become “old man yells at cloud,” this one’s for you.

00:00 — Cold open: “Kids these days” is ancient

01:03 — Welcome + why generational blame repeats

02:32 — The Market Revolution: youth adapt first, olds panic

06:45 — The Gilded Age: cities, youth culture, and moral fears

09:51 — The Progressive Era: young reformers vs. elite backlash

11:57 — The Jazz Age: cars, jazz, sexuality, and 1920s youth panic

13:54 — The 1960s: civil rights, Vietnam, counterculture, generational war

16:06 — Millennials & Gen Z: debt, housing, climate, and modern blame

19:14 — The recurring five-step generational pattern

21:31 — Why older generations forget what youth feels like

22:23 — What to do with this pattern (skepticism + perspective)

23:58 — Final takeaway: The complaint is old — the kids are new

24:22 — Closing + sign-off

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America has tried the “tiny federal government” experiment before. After the War of 1812, Jefferson’s minimalist republic simply couldn’t handle a big-power world—so a new generation rebuilt the state.

This episode traces how Calhoun, Clay, Jackson, Adams, and the Marshall Court turned a weak agrarian republic into a nationalist market power between 1815 and the early 1820s.

America has tried “small government” in a big-power world before. After the War of 1812, Jefferson’s tiny federal state—low taxes, a skeleton army and navy, deep suspicion of banks—collapsed under the pressure of war, markets, and territorial expansion.

In this episode of How the HELL Did We Get Here?, I walk through Chapter 3 of Charles Sellers’ The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 and show how a new generation of Republican leaders—John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and the Marshall Court under John Marshall and Joseph Story—rebuilt the United States as a national market state.

We’ll cover:

How the War of 1812 exposed the limits of Jeffersonian “small government”

Calhoun and Clay’s nationalist agenda: the Second Bank of the United States, the American System, and the Dallas Tariff of 1816

The constitutional fight over internal improvements and the Bonus Bill

The Marshall Court’s “market constitution”: Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee, McCulloch v. Maryland, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and Gibbons v. Ogden

Andrew Jackson’s wars against Native Americans as economic conquest—Creek lands, Florida campaigns, early Indian Removal—and the rise of the Cotton Kingdom

John Quincy Adams’s diplomacy: the Adams-Onís Treaty, Rush-Bagot, the Convention of 1818, and the road to the Monroe Doctrine

Why “national republicanism” looked triumphant in the early 1820s—and why slavery, Native resistance, taxes, and sectionalism were already tearing it apart

Along the way, I also draw on:

The American Pageant (AP U.S. History)

Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty!

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought (Oxford History of the United States)

If you’re interested in how the Market Revolution, federal power, Native dispossession, slavery, and early 19th-century nationalism fit together, this is the episode for you.