Monroe Inaugurated

March 4, 1817

James Monroe took the oath outside a still-rebuilding Capitol and began what a Boston newspaper would call the Era of Good Feelings. It was briefer than advertised, but for a moment the Federalists were dead, Jefferson's republicans ruled unopposed, and the young country pretended party politics had ended. The Missouri crisis of 1820 would shatter the illusion and reveal slavery as the fault line through American unity.