United States House of Representatives elections in North Carolina, 1817

United States House of Representatives elections, 1816

← 1814

April 30, 1816 - August 14, 1817

1818 →

All 185 seats to the United States House of Representatives
93 seats were needed for a majority

	Majority party	Minority party

Leader	Henry Clay	Timothy Pitkin
Party	Democratic-Republican	Federalist
Leader's seat	Kentucky-2nd	Connecticut-AL
Last election	119 seats	64 seats
Seats won	145	40
Seat change	26	24

Speaker before election

Henry Clay
Democratic-Republican

Elected Speaker

Henry Clay
Democratic-Republican

Elections to the United States House of Representatives for the 15th Congress were held in the various states between April 1816 (in New York) and August 14, 1817 (in North Carolina). The Congress first met on December 1, 1817.

The Democratic-Republican Party made significant gains during this election cycle, which helped to usher in what is known as the Era of Good Feelings under President James Monroe, who was elected that year. The Federalist Party was in a state of collapse, in part because of the secessionist doctrine espoused by some party members from New England at the Hartford Convention of 1814–15. This created an almost treasonous image of the Federalist party outside its base in urban New England. The War of 1812 concluded in 1815 with a feeling of national pride, since the small American military had fought the much more powerful British forces to a stalemate. The end of the war and the foolhardy posturing of New England Federalists led voters to rally around the dominant Democratic-Republicans and usher in a period of nonpartisan, consensus governance, despite the remnants of party divisions.

The proportion of seats held by the Federalist party in the House of Representatives fell to less than a quarter. Even at that, the election of 1816 gave them the highest proportion of seats that they were ever able to secure before the national party ceased to function as of 1824. In the same period, the Democratic-Republicans enjoyed majorities never again approached by any American political party until the era of Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

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Wikipedia