Chapter 9: Jacksonian America

American History: A Survey

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Does any of this sound familiar?

“The most able men in the United States are very rarely placed at the head of affairs,” French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America (1835). The reason, Tocqueville suggested, lay in the character of democracy itself. Most citizens simply ignored important political issues, refused out of jealousy to elect their intellectual superiors, and listened in awe to “the clamor of a mountebank (a charismatic fraud) who knows the secret of stimulating their tastes.” -America: A Concise History

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Political Parties

Old View New View Many considered parties

evils to be avoided and thought the nation should seek a broad consensus in which permanent factional lines would not exist

In the 1820s-1830s, those assumptions gave way to a new view: that permanent, institutionalized parties were a desirable part of the political process, that they were essential to democracy.

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The Rise of Mass Politics: 1824-1840 Key Concept 3.3 (IIIA)

Before 1815, men of great ability governed. By the 1820s and 1830s, the watchword was democracy, which in practice meant rule by popularly elected party politicians. The struggle to expand suffrage began in the 1810s, and by the mid-1820s many states had instituted universal white male suffrage or had given the vote to all white men who paid taxes or served in the militia. Nowhere else in the world did ordinary farmers and wage earners exercise such political influence.

A new party, the Democrats, capture the White House.

New forms of politicking emerged (candidates used banners, badges, parades, barbecues, free drinks, and baby kissing to “get out the vote”)

Voter turnout rose dramatically. APUSH: MR. ROLOFSON

Election of 1824

The last of the old-style elections was marked by the controversial corrupt bargain of 1824.

After the War of 1812, the aristocratic Federalist Party virtually disappeared, and the Republican Party splintered into competing factions. Because no candidate received an absolute majority, the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution (ratified in 1804) specified that the House of Representatives would choose the president from among the three highest vote-getters.

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Henry Clay’s American System Key Concepts 4.1 (IC) and 4.2 (IIIE)

The American System: the plan rested on three pillars: a new national bank, a tariff on imported manufactured goods to protect American industry, and federal financing of improved roads and canals. In other words: a strong banking system, a protective tariff, and a network of roads and canals.

The American System sought to strengthen and unify the nation’s economy through the creation of a stronger tariff, the use of the national bank, and the development of a national network of transportation infrastructure. Clay believed that without this system, the nation’s economy would ultimately fail because the three major regions of the nation could not stand alone economically. Each region of the nation, however, had its own interests. The South, in particular, would have benefited very little from the system Clay proposed.

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“Tariff of Abominations” (Tariff of 1828) Key Concept 4.2 (IIIE)

Tariffs protected American industry against competition from European manufactured goods, but they also drove up prices for all Americans and invited retaliatory tariffs on American agricultural exports abroad.

Southerners, as heavy consumers of manufactured goods with little manufacturing industry of their own, were hostile to tariffs. Southerners believed, not illogically, that the “Yankee tariff” discriminated against them. Falling on hard times while the rest of the country was expanding and getting wealthier, the tariff provided a convenient scapegoat. The “Tariff of Abominations” was denounced in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest.

Southerners sold their cotton and other farm produce in a world market completely unprotected by tariffs but were forced to buy their manufactured goods in an American market heavily protected by tariffs. Protectionism protected Yankee manufacturers while the South felt they were stuck with the bill.

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Election of 1828 Andrew Jackson: “President of the Common Man”

1828: Jackson vs. Adams

Mudslinging reached new lows in 1828

The Jacksonians called themselves Democrats or “the Democracy,” names that conveyed their egalitarian message.

(In 1824, ¼ of those eligible went to the polls, in 1828, ½ cast their ballots)

Jackson’s popularity frightened men of wealth

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Andrew Jackson

Jackson’s priority was to destroy the American System and all national plans for economic development.

“Kitchen Cabinet”

“King Mob”

“Old Hickory”

Spoils System: rewarding political supporters with public office

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Webster-Hayne Debate Key Concept 4.2 (IIIE)

A number of political developments reflected the growing sectional strains as a result of the divergent economies: 1) Webster-Hayne

Debate, 2) Fragmentation and realignment of political parties (formation of the Republican Party in 1854)

The Webster-Hayne debates began over the sale of public lands then switched to states’ rights.

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Nullification and the Nullification Crisis Key Concept 4.3 (IIB)

South Carolinians took the lead in protesting against the “Tariff of Abominations”, going so far as to publish a pamphlet known as the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (secretly penned by John C. Calhoun), denouncing the tariff unconstitutional. Going beyond the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, it bluntly proposed that the states should nullify the tariff, that they should declare it null and void.

South Carolina declared the existing tariff to be null and void within the state, but Jackson was the wrong president to stare down. Congress passes the Force Bill, authorizing the president to use the army and navy, if necessary, to collect federal tariff duties. Henry Clay steps forward and throws his influence behind a compromise bill that would gradually reduce the tariff by 10% over 8 years (Compromise Tariff of 1833).

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Indian Removal Key Concepts 4.1 (IB) and 4.3 (IIB)

Jackson pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through Congress over determined opposition. The Removal Act created the Indian Territory on national lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and located in present-day Oklahoma. It promised money and reserved land to Native American peoples who would give up their ancestral holdings east of the Mississippi River.

When Chief Black Hawk and his Sauk and Fox followers refused to leave rich farmland in western Illinois in 1832, Jackson sent troops to expel them by force.

In the meantime, the Cherokees had carried the defense of their lands to the Supreme Court.

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Indian Removal and the Court Key Concept 4.3 (IIB)

A number of tribes had already adopted white institutions and lifestyles, and the Cherokees devised a government modeled directly on the U.S. Constitution.

None of this carried any weight in the Georgia legislature.

In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831), Marshall denied the Cherokees’ claim of independence and declared that Indian people were “domestic dependent nations.”

However, in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), Marshall and the court sided with the Cherokees against Georgia, holding that Indian nations have territorial boundaries.

Jackson ignores the ruling. Instead of guaranteeing the Cherokees’ territory, the U.S. government took it from them.

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Trail of Tears Key Concept 4.3 (IIB)

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The central political struggle of the Age of Jackson was the president’s war on the Second Bank of the United States.

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The Bank War Key Concept 4.2 (IIIE)

In 1832, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster persuaded Biddle to seek an early extension of the bank’s charter (which still had four years to run). They had the votes in Congress to enact the required legislation and hoped to lure Jackson into a veto that would split the Democrats just before the 1832 elections.

Jackson turned the tables on Clay and Webster. He vetoed the bill. Jackson declared that Congress had no constitutional authority to charter a national bank. He condemned the bank as “subversive of the rights of the States,” “dangerous to the liberties of the people,” and a privileged monopoly that promoted “the advancement of the few at the expense of…farmers, mechanics, and laborers.”

Jackson’s attack on the bank carried him to victory in 1832.

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Burying the Bank Key Concept 4.2 (IIIE)

Not content to wait for the charter of the Bank of the United States to expire in 1836, Jackson authorized the removal of federal funds from its vaults and their deposit in local banks. Not surprisingly, political and personal connections often determined the choice of these “pet banks.” Jackson then appointed Roger B. Taney to carry out the orders, then appoints him chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Biddle called in his bank’s loans, producing a minor financial crises (and seemingly justifying Jackson’s accusations…)

The death of the Bank of the United States left a financial vacuum in the American economy and kicked off a cycle of booms and busts, most notably the Panic of 1837.

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Election of 1832: Clay vs. Jackson the appearance of national nominating conventions to name candidates

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The Jacksonian Impact Key Concept 4.2 (IIIE)

Jackson’s legacy is complex:

On the institutional level, he permanently expanded the authority of the nation’s chief executive by identifying it with the voice of the people

At the same time (and somewhat contradictorily), Jackson curbed the reach of the national government. (undermined Clay’s American System of national banking, protective tariffs, and internal improvements)

Jackson also undermined the constitutional jurisprudence of John Marshall by appointing Roger B. Taney and Marshall’s successor. Taney partially reversed the vested-property-rights decisions of the Marshall Court and gave constitutional legitimacy to policies of states’ rights.

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Jackson’s Maysville Road veto was an opportunity for him to Key Concept 4.2 (IIIE)

(A) challenge federal infrastructural development

(B) attack opponents of his policy to relocate Native Americans

(C) disregard John Marshall’s ruling on contracts

(D) advocate for the construction of a National Road

Answer: A. Jackson claimed that since the Maysville Road lay within one state, the federal government should not be responsible for the cost of its construction. This provided him an opportunity to challenge federally funded infrastructural development.

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First and Second Party Systems Key Concepts 3.3 (IIIA) and 4.1 (IA)

First Party System Second Party System

1792-1824

Federalists (Hamilton) and Democratic-Republicans (Jefferson and Madison)

Federalists dominant until 1800

Democratic-Republicans dominant after 1800

1828-1852 (or 1854)

Rapidly rising levels of voter interest

Personal loyalty to party

Democrats (Jackson) and Whigs (Clay, some National Republicans)

Reflected events of the Jacksonian Era

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The Second American Party System: Democrats vs. Whigs

Key Concepts 3.3 (IIIA) and 4.1 (IA) Democrats Whigs

Democrats clung to states’ rights and federal restraint in social and economic affairs as their basic doctrines.

(Both parties found common ground in their historical roots in Jeffersonian republicanism)

Whigs tended to favor a renewed national bank, protective tariffs, internal improvements, public schools, and, increasingly, moral reforms such as the prohibition of liquor and eventually the abolition of slavery.

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The Second American Party System: Democrats vs. Whigs

Key Concepts 3.3 (IIIA) and 4.1 (IA) Democrats (again, not related to today’s Democratic party)

warned that “non-producers” (bankers, merchants, and speculators) were seeking to use connections with government to enhance their wealth to the disadvantage of the “producing classes” of farmers, artisans, and laborers. They believed the government should adopt a hands-off attitude toward the economy and not award special favors to entrenched economic interests.

Whigs united behind the American System, believing that via a protective tariff, a national bank, and aid to internal improvements, the federal government could guide economic development. They were strongest in the Northeast, the most rapidly modernizing region of the country.

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More about the Democrats Key Concepts 3.3 (IIIA) and 4.1 (IA)

Many slaveholders supported the Democrats, believing states’ rights to be slavery’s first line of defense. But like well-to-do merchants and industrialists in the North, the largest southern planters generally voted Whig. During Jackson’s presidency, Democrats reduced expenditures, lowered the tariff, killed the national bank, and refused pleas for federal aid to internal improvements. By 1835, Jackson had even managed to pay off the national debt. As a result, states replaced the federal government as the country’s main economic actors, planning systems of canals and roads and chartering banks and other corporations.

Democrats opposed attempts to impose a unified moral vision on society, such as “temperance’ legislation.

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More about the Whigs Key Concepts 3.3 (IIIA) and 4.1 (IA)

Whigs, for their part, insisted that liberty and power reinforced each other. Liberty, Whigs believed, required a prosperous and moral America. The government should create the conditions for balanced and regulated economic development, thereby promoting a prosperity in which all classes and regions would share.

Whigs, moreover, rejected the premise that the government must not interfere in private life. To function as free – that is, self-directed and self-disciplined – moral agents, individuals required certain character traits, which government could help to instill. Many evangelical Protestants supported the Whigs, convinced that democratic governments could support principles of morality.

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Election of 1836: Van Buren vs. Harrison

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Martin Van Buren “The Little Magician”

By using gifts to enlist the loyalty of voters, Van Buren transformed American politics from an upper-class avocation to a democratic contest for votes and power.

Essentially, Van Buren created and organized the first of the political machines.

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Panic of 1837

CAUSES EFFECTS

speculation, Bank War, Specie Circular, failures of wheat crops, British investors call in foreign loans

banks collapsed, prices dropped, sales of public lands fell off, customs revenues dried up, factories closed, unemployment

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Election of 1840 Van Buren vs. Harrison (“Old Tippecanoe”)

Log Cabin and Hard Cider

The Whigs boosted their electoral hopes by welcoming women to campaign festivities.

Politicians were now forced to curry favor with the voting masses.

The election of 1840 demonstrated two major changes in American politics since the Era of Good Feelings:

1) the triumph of a populist democratic style

2) the formation of a vigorous and durable two-party system (Democrats and the Whigs)

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“Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”

Led by Clay and Webster, the Whigs in Congress were poised to reverse the Jacksonian revolution. But their hopes were short-lived; barely a month after his inauguration, Harrison died of pneumonia.

Vice-President (now President) John Tyler, as it turns out, was not a Whig. Whig newspapers were soon calling the president His Accidency and The Executive Ass. Tyler’s four years in office were nearly devoid of accomplishment.

(Tyler had joined the Whigs only to protest Jackson’s stance against nullification. On economic issues, Tyler shared Jackson’s hostility to the Second Bank and the American System.)

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The Second Party System Key Concept 3.3 (IIIA)

During the Second Party System, politics became more responsive to the popular will as ordinary people voted for candidates who shared their values and lifestyles. (This message falsely portrays William Henry Harrison as a poor and simple frontier farmer…)

Regional interests continued to trump national concerns as the basis for many political leaders’ positions on economic issues including slavery, the national bank, tariffs, and internal improvements.

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Prompt: Assess the validity of the following statement: “The American Whigs offered no positive agenda of their own but simply were a byproduct of the administration of Andrew Jackson.”

Valid: No agenda Not Valid: offered agenda

Documents: Documents:

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Sample Thesis Statement

The Whigs supported a number of different positive visions for America, including abolition and American nationalism. However, because the political party rose in reaction to Andrew Jackson, comprised a number of different political figures with different agendas for the country, and did not last beyond a generation of political thinkers, the American Whigs were simply a reaction to and byproduct of the administration of Andrew Jackson.

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