ABSTRACT
In July 1817, during President James Monroe’s (see fact box, p. 188) triumphal tour of New England, a Federalist newspaper in Boston, the Columbian Sentinel, predicted that his administration would usher in an “Era of Good Feelings.” While its reality can easily be exaggerated, the phrase did catch the tenor the new president wished to set for his administration as revealed in the northern tour itself. He hoped to emphasize national unity by playing down partisan differences and sectional animosities. He believed in the principle that the president “ought not to be the head of a party, but the nation itself.”
