Politicians and citizens today often complain that politics is too partisan — that members of the two major parties are too unwilling to work together. But in the early national period, politics was even more partisan. Newspapers attacked the President when war threatened, political opponents fought each other to the death, and residents of all regions of the country grumbled that if they didn’t get their way they might just take their states out of the union. In this chapter we’ll look at how North Carolinians participated in state politics and in key national events such as the War of 1812.

Section Contents

• The Stanly-Spaight Duel
• The Louisiana Purchase
• The War of 1812
• Debating War with Britain: For the War
• Debating War with Britain: Against the War
• The Burning of Washington
• Dolley Madison and the White House Treasures
• The Expansion of Slavery and the Missouri Compromise