The Election of 1824 is usually remembered for one phrase: the “corrupt bargain.”

But that’s not really what made it a turning point. In 1824, Andrew Jackson won more popular votes and more electoral votes than any other candidate — and still lost the presidency in the House of Representatives. Constitutionally, the system worked exactly as designed.

Politically, millions of Americans concluded the system no longer deserved their trust. This episode tells the story of 1824 not as a scandal, but as a legitimacy crisis — the moment when a political order built on elite mediation collided with a rapidly democratizing electorate shaped by the Panic of 1819 and the Market Revolution.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Panic of 1819 and the “general mass of disaffection” it created

• How Andrew Jackson’s candidacy began as elite maneuvering — and escaped elite control

• Jackson as symbol: opposition to banks, insiders, and distant authority • The collapse of the congressional caucus system

• John Quincy Adams’s national vision — and why it felt abstract to many voters

• Henry Clay’s American System: development or acceleration of inequality?

• William H. Crawford and the defense of old Republican discipline • State-level democratic mobilization (Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina)

• The expansion of white male suffrage and the rise of public, confrontational politics • Why Jackson offered judgment rather than policy

• The House decision and the constitutional mechanism few voters accepted • The “corrupt bargain” as perception — and why perception mattered more than proof

• The deeper legitimacy question: do rules deserve obedience if they override popular will?

• How 1824 transformed Jackson from candidate into cause

• Why the real turning point wasn’t 1828 — it was the crisis of 1824

Guiding question: When Andrew Jackson lost in 1824 despite winning the most votes, was that a constitutional outcome — or a political rupture that permanently changed American democracy?

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Chapters: 00:00 — Cold open: “Something had just been stolen” 02:22 — Welcome + guiding question 03:38 — Jackson’s hesitant candidacy and elite expectations 07:40 — Opposition politics: banks, insiders, and resentment 11:36 — The collapse of the caucus system 13:00 — Adams, Clay, Crawford: competing visions of authority 16:59 — What voters increasingly wanted: judgment and accountability 18:08 — Jackson’s image and elite alarm 20:17 — Democratic mobilization in the states 24:42 — Politics becomes public, emotional, confrontational 25:20 — Election results: plurality without majority 26:40 — The House decides: constitutional procedure vs popular legitimacy 28:25 — The “corrupt bargain” and collapse of trust 29:40 — Why 1824 — not 1828 — was the true turning point 30:15 — Closing

Look, I don’t like expanded police powers, surveillance, emergency declarations, suspension of normal rules… but this is an emergency. We can deal with civil liberties later. That logic isn’t new. It’s a recurring pattern in U.S. history — and almost every time, the rollback never comes. A crisis hits, government claims extraordinary authority, and when the crisis fades, the powers don’t fully retreat. They ratchet. The baseline shifts. What used to be unthinkable starts to feel normal. In this episode of Past is Prologue, I trace that “emergency powers ratchet” across two centuriesbefore bringing it to the present moment and what’s unfolding right now. In this episode, we cover: The Quasi-War and the Alien & Sedition Acts (1798): “national security” as cover for partisan repression The Civil War: suspension of habeas corpus, military arrests, and how emergency authority becomes precedent World War I: the Espionage Act, sedition enforcement, propaganda, and Schenck’s “clear and present danger” The post-WWI pivot: the Palmer Raids and the migration of emergency logic inward (“the enemy among us”) World War II mobilization — and the moral catastrophe of Japanese American internment (Korematsu) The Cold War as “permanent emergency”: HUAC, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and policing ideology as governance 9/11 and the War on Terror: the Patriot Act, DHS, surveillance, indefinite detention, Guantanamo, and the end of endpoints The core argument: emergency powers are politically addictive — and institutions rarely return to baseline once fear becomes normal The present: why today’s claims of emergency and “security” should trigger immediate skepticism — and civic resistance

00:00 — The “emergency” argument (and why the rollback rarely comes) 00:35 — The emergency powers ratchet: crisis → authority → baseline shift 01:27 — Past Is Prologue intro + today’s topic 01:53 — The Quasi-War: fear, fragility, and the first big expansion of police power 03:09 — Alien & Sedition Acts: national security as cover for partisan repression 04:19 — The recurring formula: emergency + politics = expanded power 05:07 — The Civil War: Lincoln, habeas corpus, and executive power in existential crisis 07:18 — The lesson that sticks: “move first, ask legal questions later” 07:45 — World War I: total war and emergency governance at scale 08:07 — Espionage Act + sedition: criminalizing dissent and manufacturing unanimity 09:36 — Creel’s propaganda apparatus + managing the press 10:03 — Schenck v. U.S.: “clear and present danger” and the legal rubber stamp 12:49 — Postwar pivot: emergency logic migrates inward 13:10 — The First Red Scare + Palmer Raids: repression in the name of “internal security” 14:29 — The New Deal builds capacity; WWII turns it to full throttle 15:46 — WWII mobilization: coordination, rationing, censorship, and propaganda 17:05 — Japanese American internment: the clearest civil liberties catastrophe 18:20 — Korematsu: courts defer; fear overrides rights 19:14 — What remains “acceptable” after 1945: the ideas that linger 20:20 — The Cold War: emergency power becomes a default setting 21:23 — The enemy “among us”: second Red Scare conditions take shape 22:01 — HUAC, loyalty oaths, blacklists, and policing ideology 23:25 — McCarthy exploits a system already built for repression 24:01 — The Cold War’s inheritance: emergency governance sustained indefinitely 25:04 — 9/11: the modern ratchet click forward 25:57 — Patriot Act + surveillance expansion 26:20 — DHS: the security state reorganizes itself 27:12 — The War on Terror’s key shift: a war with no endpoint 27:49 — Guantanamo, indefinite detention, and legal black holes 29:08 — Rendition, torture-by-proxy, and reputational damage 29:55 — Domestic politics adapts: disloyalty narratives and opportunists 31:03 — Iraq: narrative convergence and marginalizing skepticism 32:12 — Takeaway: emergency powers are politically addictive 33:15 — The present moment: federal power surge in

The Missouri Compromise is often remembered as a clever fix — a temporary truce, a line on a map, a way to “save the Union.”

But that’s not what it really was.

In 1820, Congress faced a choice it had spent decades trying not to make: confront the future of slavery now, while the country was still small and fragile — or postpone the reckoning and keep the system expanding. Congress chose postponement. And by doing so, it didn’t avoid the slavery question. It built it into the machinery of national politics.

This episode tells the story of the Missouri Crisis and Compromise as a turning point — the moment the United States chose accommodation over confrontation, and set itself on a path of escalating sectional crisis that would eventually end in Civil War.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why Missouri statehood triggered an explosion: slavery’s expansion, power in the Senate, and sectional deadlock

• The Tallmadge Amendment: what it tried to do — and why the South treated it as an existential threat

• Slavery’s transformation after 1790: cotton, the domestic slave trade, and the rebirth of plantation power

• Fear and hardening ideology: Haiti, Gabriel’s Rebellion, and the end of gradual-emancipation optimism

• The political math behind the crisis: the Virginia Dynasty, 3/5 representation, and northern fears of planter domination

• The compromise deal: Maine + Missouri, and the 36°30′ line that “contained” slavery on paper

• Missouri’s pro-slavery constitution — and the fight over banning free Black Americans from entering the state

• Jefferson’s “fire bell in the night”: why many understood the crisis wasn’t solved, just deferred

• The pattern that follows: balance → containment → postponement (Texas, Mexican Cession, Kansas-Nebraska)

• The core question: did the Missouri Compromise create more problems than it solved?

Guiding question:

Did the Missouri Compromise end up creating more problems than it ultimately resolved?

Sources referenced:

American Pageant

Give Me Liberty

Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought

Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846

John Craig Hammond, “President, Planter, Politician: James Monroe, the Missouri Crisis, and the Politics of Slavery”

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Chapters:

00:00 — Cold open: the choice Congress didn’t want to make

01:21 — Welcome + sources

03:38 — The Missouri Compromise: not a fix, a choice

05:04 — Why many thought slavery would fade

06:34 — Cotton + expansion + the rebirth of slavery

08:12 — Haiti/Gabriel’s Rebellion and hardening white politics

09:22 — Missouri applies for statehood: why it detonates

10:09 — Congress’s earlier attempts to limit slavery in Missouri

11:19 — Hemp, growth, and Missouri’s enslaved population

12:00 — The Illinois slavery fight and the “butternut” West

14:25 — The illusion breaks: slavery is advancing west

15:03 — Tallmadge Amendment: restriction + gradual emancipation

16:42 — Not abolitionism: northern fear of planter domination

18:02 — Southern backlash: states’ rights and disunion threats

20:24 — Amendment passes House, dies in Senate: sectional deadlock

20:57 — Why the Union felt fragile in 1819–1820

23:05 — Maine leverage and the deal-making logic

23:42 — The 36°30′ line and Monroe signs the...

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.

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📌 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?

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.