James Monroe the party offered little opposition following the conclusion of a popular war that they had opposed. Monroe received 183 of the 217 electoral votes, winning every state but Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. Monroe largely ignored old party lines in making federal appointments, which reduced political tensions and augmented the sense of "oneness" that pervaded the United States. He made two long national tours to build national trust. At Boston, a newspaper hailed his 1817 visit as the beginning of an "Era of Good Feelings". Frequent stops on his tours included ceremonies of welcome and expressions of good-will. The Federalist Party
José Joaquim Almeida January 1817, Ambassador Onis began filing the Spanish claims against James Monroe, then in charge of the Secretary of State, focusing specifically on Almeida. Onis presented testimony from several captures in the first months of the year, including two sailors who testified that on March 15 near Havana, he shot and boarded a British brig. Monroe became president, and when in March 1817 he arrived in Baltimore, Almeida was immediately processed by the Maryland state prosecutor Elias Glenn, imposed neutrality laws, in spite the protests of Ambassador Onis to Richard Rush, at that time the Secretary of State, to judge