Americans were feeling pretty good in 1820. So good, in fact, they called it the “Era of Good Feelings.” When the War of 1812 ended in 1815, the young nation celebrated the achievement of surviving a second war against the world’s most powerful military.

The economy prospered, and a renewed sense of nationalism took hold, even shaping politics. The collapse of the Federalist Party — staunch opponents of the war — and the waning of intense partisan rancor added to the optimism.

It wouldn’t last.

An economic panic in 1819 brought the nation’s first great depression, the effects of which spilled into the 1820s. By the end of the decade, politics had descended into mudslinging that makes modern campaigns look friendly by comparison. The 1820s ushered in the age of the self-reliant “common man,” as more states dropped property requirements for voting and more Americans than ever before were able to cast ballots.

Geographically, America looked very different from it does today. At the beginning of 1820, Maine was still part of Massachusetts, with its border with the Canadian province of New Brunswick in dispute. Florida belonged to Spain, along with much of what would later become the American Southwest. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama clashed with Spain over ownership of a strip of land along the Gulf Coast — territory that would ultimately become the Florida Panhandle. Alaska remained Russian territory.

The young United States also began to flex its strategic muscle in the 1820s. The Monroe Doctrine declared that the U.S. would stay out of European affairs while warning European powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere — a bold statement for a nation not yet 50 years old.

In the South, King Cotton powered the economy, fueled by new technology and the brutal labor of enslaved people.

Still overwhelmingly agrarian, the 23 United States reported steady population growth of 33% from the 1810 census. By 1820, there were 9,683,453 Americans, excluding slaves.

Meanwhile, Americans continued to push west along trails blazed by intrepid mountain men.

Here’s a look at some of the highlights from America in the 1820s.

The United States had repeatedly tried to buy Florida. By 1819, the territory had become a burden and distraction for Spain. That year, the two nations reached an agreement in which Spain ceded Florida in exchange for the U.S. renouncing any claims to Texas. Ratified in 1821, the Adams-Onís Treaty also established the Western boundary of the Louisiana Purchase.

In 1818, the territory of Missouri applied for statehood, becoming the first territory west of the Mississippi River to do so. A contentious debate followed, and Congress denied its application. Admitting Missouri as a slave state would upset the balance between slave and free states in the Senate.

Missouri reapplied in 1820. Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed a compromise that admitted Missouri as a slave state while admitting Maine as a free state. Known as the Missouri Compromise, the agreement also prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of latitude 36°30’, except for Missouri itself. The compromise temporarily quieted the growing debate over slavery as the nation expanded. It was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, and the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1857 in the Dred Scott Decision.

The War of 1812 hastened the demise of the Federalist Party, the nation’s first political party. Comprising mostly wealthy bankers and businessmen, the Federalists had opposed the war. Americans flush with military success branded them unpatriotic. As political rancor faded, Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republican Party gained dominance, ushering in a period of relative political calm.

During this “Era of Good Feelings,” President James Monroe easily won a second term in 1820. He was the last president who was both a Founding Father and a Revolutionary War combat veteran. Monroe is best remembered for the Monroe Doctrine, first articulated in his annual message to Congress. It asserted American influence over the Western Hemisphere and warned European powers against further colonization there — a doctrine that would shape U.S. foreign policy for generations.

The era soured during the presidential election of 1824. With no candidate winning a majority of electoral votes, the election was decided by the U.S. House of Representatives, which chose John Quincy Adams as president. Andrew Jackson, an 1812 war hero who had won both the popular vote and the most electoral votes, believed a “corrupt bargain” had been struck between Adams and House Speaker Henry Clay. Furious, Jackson resigned his Senate seat and began plotting his political revenge.

The 1828 campaign between Adams and Jackson turned vicious. Both sides hurled outrageous accusations, including claims of murder, adultery, bigamy, and even “pimping.” Partisan newspapers reveled in the attacks. Jackson prevailed, but the bitterness of the election lingered long after the votes were counted.

Andrew Jackson championed the cause of the “common man,” and more men could vote in the 1820s than ever before. In 1821, New York eliminated property requirements for white male voters. By 1830, 10 states had followed suit.

Critics in the 1828 campaign highlighted Jackson’s fiery temper, and not without reason. He had participated in several duels, killing one opponent. While generally frowned upon, dueling was still an accepted way to settle disputes among gentlemen. Jackson was hardly alone. In March 1820, naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with a former Navy officer with whom he had served during the Tripolitan War.

Another war hero met a much happier fate. The Marquis de Lafayette, an aging hero of the American Revolution, returned to the United States in 1824 and was greeted like a rock star. The beloved 67-year-old French nobleman who had fought alongside George Washington toured more than 6,000 miles through all 24 states. The last surviving general of the Continental Army was honored with cannon salutes, banquets and celebrations everywhere he went — including Butler. Traveling by stagecoach from Pittsburgh to Erie, Lafayette and his son stopped in Butler for lunch on June 1, 1825. Before leaving, he reportedly shook hands with at least 400 awestruck residents, including fellow veterans of the Revolution.

Two of America’s most famous Founding Fathers also made headlines in the mid-1820s. Thomas Jefferson, the nation’s third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, died at age 83 on July 4, 1826, at Monticello — exactly 50 years after the Declaration was adopted. Several hours later, John Adams, the nation’s second president and a key revolutionary leader, died in Quincy, Mass.

Americans in the early 1820s were still recovering from the Panic of 1819, the young republic’s first great depression. Businesses failed nationwide. One was a sawmill owned by John James Audubon, who later gained fame as an artist, naturalist and conservationist. Triggered in part by collapsing overseas demand for American goods, the depression’s aftermath spurred reforms in poverty relief, the growth of public education and rising support for protective tariffs.

In 1824, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Marshall issued a landmark ruling reinforcing Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce. In Gibbons v. Ogden, the Court struck down a New York law granting Robert Fulton and Robert Livingston a monopoly on steamboat navigation. The decision opened waterways around New York City to competition and firmly established federal supremacy over interstate commerce.

Entrepreneur Cornelius Vanderbilt seized the opportunity, building a fleet of steamboats and eventually dominating travel on Long Island Sound. His success propelled investments in early railroads, making Vanderbilt one of the wealthiest Americans and patriarch of a powerful industrial dynasty.

Vanderbilt embodied the market revolution transforming American life. Factories began replacing artisans, farms increasingly produced for distant markets, and cotton — driven by the cotton gin and enslaved labor — became the nation’s most profitable export.

Overland travel in the 1820s was slow and grueling. Waterways served as the nation’s highways, and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 was a turning point. Construction on the 363-mile engineering marvel had begun in 1817, linking the Hudson River to Lake Erie. The canal gave Midwestern farmers, loggers, miners and manufacturers access to eastern markets and allowed passengers to travel comfortably from Albany to Buffalo, accelerating settlement of the interior of the continent.

In 1821, Missouri trader William Becknell left Franklin, Mo., and pioneered a commercial route to Santa Fe. The Mexican government, newly independent from Spain, welcomed American trade. Commerce along the 1,200-mile Santa Fe Trail flourished until the arrival of the railroad in 1880.

Other routes west were forged by mountain men — rugged loners who preferred the dangers of the Rockies to settled life. During the peak of the beaver fur trade, these men explored vast regions beyond the Mississippi. Figures such as John Colter, Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith later served as guides for soldiers and settlers. Their deep knowledge of the land and Native peoples helped open routes such as the Oregon Trail.

On Sept. 26, 1820, one of America’s most famous frontiersmen died quietly in his sleep at age 86. Daniel Boone had opened Kentucky to white settlement by crossing the Cumberland Gap and blazing the Wilderness Road. His exploits fighting British soldiers and Native Americans during the American Revolution made him a living legend. Boone grew restless as settlements followed him west. He spent his final years on the edge of the frontier in present-day Defiance, Mo.

In the 1820s, literate Americans devoured works such as Rip Van Winkle (1819) and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) by Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans (1826), and James Hogg’s The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).

The Saturday Evening Post first appeared in August 1821 and grew into a legendary publication that later made Norman Rockwell famous. It continues to publish today.

On Dec. 23, 1823, the poem “A Visit From St. Nicholas” appeared anonymously in a Troy, N.Y., newspaper. Thirteen years later, Clement Clarke Moore claimed authorship, though some scholars argue Henry Livingston wrote it. Regardless, the poem known today as “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” introduced a distinctly American Santa Claus.

In 1827, artist and naturalist John James Audubon published the first volume of Birds of America, eventually spanning four massive volumes and ranking among the largest books ever produced.

In September 1821, a powerful hurricane struck North Carolina and roared up the East Coast. On Sept. 3, its eye passed directly over Manhattan. A 13-foot storm surge flooded lower Manhattan as far north as Canal Street. As the storm churned through New England, amateur meteorologist William Redfield noticed that fallen trees in Connecticut pointed in opposite directions. His conclusion that hurricanes were massive rotating storms was controversial but groundbreaking.

Less than a year earlier, the sea had produced a different kind of catastrophe. In November 1820, a sperm whale rammed and sank the Essex, a Nantucket whaling ship, in the Pacific Ocean. Twenty survivors escaped in three small boats. With little food or water and hundreds of miles from land, they drifted for months. Eventually, eight men were rescued. Five had survived by consuming the remains of seven companions. One of the most harrowing survival stories in American maritime history, the tragedy later inspired Moby-Dick.

The 1820s bridged the gap between the Founding Era and the Jacksonian Age. The decade laid the groundwork for mass democracy, modern capitalism and continental expansion. Often overshadowed by louder eras, the 1820s were a quiet but powerful beginning of the America we know today.