US:
A Narrative History Volume 1 – Chapter 11 Review
The Rise of Democracy
[1824-1840]
“Wanted: Curling Tongs,
Cologne, and Silk-Stockings …”
The notice, printed in a local newspaper,
made the rounds in the rural Pearl River district of Mississippi. A traveler,
the advertisement announced, had lost a suitcase while fording the Tallahala
River. The contents included “6 ruffled shirts, 6 cambric handkerchiefs, 1
hair-brush, 1 tooth-brush, 1 nail-brush …” As the list went on, the popular
reaction would inevitably shift from amusement to disdain: “1 pair curling
tongs, 2 sticks pomatum … 1 box pearl powder, 1 bottle Cologne, 1 [bottle]
rose-water, 4 pairs silk stockings, and 2 pairs kid gloves.” The howls of
derision that filled the air could only have increased on learning that anyone
finding said trunk was requested to contact the owner—Mr. Powhatan Ellis of
Natchez. Powhatan Ellis was no ordinary backcountry traveler. Born into a
genteel Virginia family, Ellis had moved in 1816 to the raw Southwest to
increase his fortune. With his cultivated tastes and careful dress, he upheld
the tradition of the gentleman politician. In Virginia he would have commanded
respect: indeed, in Mississippi he had been appointed district judge and U.S.
senator. But for the voters along the Pearl River, the advertisement for his
trunk of ruffled shirts, hair oils, and fancy “skunkwater” proved to be the
political kiss of death. His opponents branded him an aristocrat and a dandy,
and his support among the piney woods farmers evaporated faster than a morning
mist along Old Muddy on a sweltering summer's day. No one was more satisfied
with this outcome than the resourceful Franklin E. Plummer, one of Ellis's
political enemies. In truth, although the unfortunate Powhatan Ellis had lost a
trunk fording a stream, he had never placed the advertisement trying to locate
it. That was the handiwork of Plummer, who well understood the new playing
field of American politics in the 1820s. If Powhatan Ellis typified the passing
political world of the Revolutionary era, Plummer was a product of the raucous
democratic system emerging in its place. Leaving his home in New England during
the hard times following the Panic of 1819, Plummer had worked his way
downriver to the bustling city of New Orleans, then headed inland to
Mississippi. Settling down in a new community, he hung out his shingle as an
attorney, complete with a law library of three books. His shrewdness and
oratorical talent made up for his lack of legal training, and he was quickly
elected to the legislature. Plummer's ambition soon flowed beyond the state
capital. In 1830 he ran for Congress against a wealthy Natchez merchant,
military hero, and member of the state's political elite. The uncouth Plummer
seemed overmatched against such a distinguished opponent, and at first few
observers took his candidacy seriously. In his campaign, however, Plummer
portrayed himself as the champion of the people battling against the
aristocrats of Natchez. Contrasting his humble background with that of his
wealthy opponent, Plummer proclaimed: “We are taught that the highway to
office, distinction and honor, is as free to the meritorious poor man, as to
the rich; to the man who has risen from obscurity by his own individual
exertions, as to him who has inherited a high and elevated standing in
society….” Taking as his slogan “Plummer for the People, and the People for
Plummer,” he was easily elected. On the campaign trail Plummer knew how to
affect the common touch. Once, while canvassing the district with his opponent,
the pair stopped at a farmhouse. When his opponent, seeking the farmer's vote,
kissed the daughter, Plummer lifted up a toddling boy and began picking red
bugs off him, telling the enchanted mother: “They are powerful bad, and mighty
hard on babies.” On another occasion, while his opponent slept, Plummer rose at
dawn to help milk the family's cow—and won another vote. He was a master at
secretly planting false stories attacking himself in the press, and then
bringing out the sworn personal testimonials of well-known men defending his
character and denouncing the charges against him.As long as Plummer maintained his image as
one of the people, fighting their battles against aristocrats, he remained
invincible. But as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1835, his touch deserted
him. Borrowing money from a Natchez bank, he purchased a stylish coach, put his
servant in a uniform, and campaigned across the state. Aghast at such
pretensions, his followers promptly abandoned him. He died in 1852 in obscurity
and poverty. Ah, Plummer! Even the staunchest of nature's noblemen may stumble,
prey to the temptations of power and commerce! The forces transforming American
society pulled Franklin Plummer in two ways. On the one hand, the growth of
commerce and new markets opened up opportunities for more and more Americans in
the quarter century after 1815. Opportunity was a byword of the age. Through
his connections with bankers and the well-to-do, Plummer saw the opportunity to
accumulate wealth and to gain status and respect. Yet at the same time that new
markets were producing a more stratified, unequal society, the nation's
politics were becoming more democratic. The new political system that developed
after 1820 differed strikingly from that of the early republic. Just as
national markets linked the regions of America economically, the new system of
national politics with its mass electioneering techniques involved more voters
than ever before and created a new class of politicians. Plummer's world reflected
that new political culture. And its central feature—another byword on
everyone's lips—was equality. In truth, the relationship between the new
equalities of politics and the new opportunities of the market was an uneasy
one.
Equality,
Opportunity, and the New Political Culture of Democracy
Coming from the more stratified
society of Europe, middle- and upper-class European visitors to the United
States were struck by the “democratic spirit” that had become “infused into all
the national habits and all the customs of society” during the 1820s and 1830s.
To begin with, they discovered that only one class of seats was available on
stagecoaches and rail cars. These were filled according to the rough-and-ready
rule of first come, first served. In steamboat dining rooms or at country
taverns, everyone ate at a common table, sharing food from the same serving
plates. As one upper-class gentleman complained: “The rich and the poor, the
educated and the ignorant, the polite and the vulgar, all herd on the cabin floor,
feed at the same table, sit in each other’s laps, as it were.” Being ushered to
bed at an inn, visitors found themselves lodged 10 to 12 people a room, often
with several bodies occupying a single bed. Fastidious Europeans were horrified
at the thought of sleeping with unwashed representatives of American democracy.
Indeed, the democratic “manners” of Americans seemed positively shocking. In
Europe social inferiors would speak only if spoken to. But Americans felt free
to strike up a conversation with anyone, including total strangers. Frances
Trollope was offended by the “coarse familiarity of address” between classes,
while another visitor complained that in a nation where every citizen felt free
to shake the hand of another, it was impossible to know anyone's social
station. This informality—a forward, even rude attitude—was not limited to
shaking hands. At theaters, it was hard to get patrons to remove their hats so
those behind them could see. Still worse, men chewed tobacco and spit
everywhere: in the national Capitol, in taverns, courts, and hospitals, even in
private homes. Fanny Kemble, an English actress, reported that on an American
steamboat “it was a perfect shower of saliva all the time.” Americans were
self-consciously proud of such democratic behavior, which they viewed as a
valued heritage of the Revolution. The keelboaters who carried the future King
Louis-Philippe of France on a trip down the Mississippi made their republican
feelings plain when the keelboat ran aground. “You kings down there!” bellowed
the captain. “Show yourselves and do a man's work, and help us three-spot’s
pull off this bar!”
The ideology of the
Revolution made it clear that, in the American deck of cards, “three-spots”
counted as much as jacks, kings, and queens. Kings were not allowed to forget
that—and neither was Franklin Plummer. Although Americans praised both
opportunity and equality, a fundamental tension existed between the two values.
Inevitably, widespread opportunity would produce inequality of wealth. In the
1790s less pronounced inequalities of wealth and status had prevailed because
of the lack of access to markets. Shoemakers in Lynn, with no way to ship large
quantities of shoes across the country, could not become wealthy. Without
steamboats or canals, farmers could not market surplus grain for profit. But by
the 1820s and 1830s, as the opportunities of the market expanded, wealth became
much more unevenly distributed. Thus the new generation had to confront
contradictions in the American creed that their parents had been able to
conveniently ignore. By equality, Americans did not mean equality of wealth or
property. “I know of no country where profounder contempt is expressed for the
theory of permanent equality of property,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote. Nor did
equality mean that all citizens had equal talent or capacity. Americans
realized that individuals possessed widely differing abilities, which
inevitably produced differences in wealth. “Distinctions in society will always
exist under every just government,” Andrew Jackson declared. “Equality of
talents, or education, or of wealth cannot be produced by human institutions.” The
emergence of democracy in American life was accompanied by a dramatic change in
men's clothing. In the eighteenth century clothing was a prime indicator of
social rank and set members of the upper class apart from ordinary citizens.
Only a gentleman could afford ruffled shirts, lace cuffs, silk stockings,
decorative garters, and buckled shoes. Because of the cost and extensive labor
involved, most Americans owned only a few clothes, and these usually were made
out of homespun—cloth woven from thread spun in the household. With a quick
glance an observer could tell a person's social rank. In the Jacksonian era,
however, fashionable clothing made from textile mill fabrics became cheaper and
much more widely available. As a result dress no longer revealed social
standing. “All sorts of cotton fabrics are now so cheap that there is no excuse
of any person's not being well provided,” commented The Young Lady's Friend in
1836. The colorful shirts, rude trousers, leather aprons, frocks, and heavy
boots and shoes worn by farmers and mechanics while working were readily
distinguishable from the coats and trousers of middle-class merchants,
professionals, managers, and clerks. But outside the workplace, differences in
clothing style, if not tailoring quality, largely disappeared. British traveler
John Fowler in 1831 was amazed to see American workers, decked out in their
Sunday best, walking the streets wearing “sleek coats, glossy hats,
watchguards, and deerskin gloves!” Unlike men in the eighteenth century these
Americans dressed in somber colors. By the 1830s “black was the prevailing
color,” one New Yorker recalled. “It was worn for promenade, parlor, church,
ball, [or] business.” The emergence after 1840 of the ready-made clothing
industry also affected men's fashions. Many men in middle-class positions were
anxious to create a proper image but could not afford the expert tailoring
required to make a business suit. So tailors developed standardized patterns
and a proportional sizing system and began mass-producing affordable ready-made
clothing. Decently made suits could be purchased off the rack, and thus clerks
began wearing clothing identical in style to that worn by their employer. By
eliminating the distinction between homemade apparel and that sewed by a
tailor, ready-made clothing further democratized men's attire. Rather than
distinguishing one class from another, democratic fashions increasingly set men
apart from women. Fashion came to be considered a female concern and
ornamentation and bright colors now were associated with women's clothing.
Ready-made clothing was not
available for women, because female apparel required a close fit in the bodice.
But the style of women's clothing also became standardized. American women
strove to imitate the latest in Paris fashions, and if they could not afford a
dressmaker's fitting, they sewed their own clothing. Illustrated magazines such
as Godey's Lady's Book publicized the latest fashions, and even young women
working in the mills at Lowell joined together to buy a subscription. As this
nattily dressed butcher suggests, clothes were not much help in sorting out
social status in America. Although the clothing of the upper class was often
made of finer material and was more skillfully tailored, by the 1820s
less-prosperous Americans wore similar styles. New ways of dressing began with
the urban middle class and gradually spread throughout most of society. As one
newspaper commented, Americans in the Jacksonian era were citizens of the
“plain dark democracy of broadcloth.” In the end, Americans embraced the equality
of opportunity, not equality of condition. “True republicanism requires
that every man shall have an equal chance—that every man shall be free to
become as unequal as he can,” one American commented. In an economy that could
go bust as well as boom, Americans agreed that one primary objective of
government was to safeguard opportunity. Thus the new politics of democracy
walked hand in hand with the new opportunities of the market. The stately James Monroe, with his powdered
hair and buckled shoes and breeches, was not part of the new politics. In 1824
as he neared the end of his second term, a host of new leaders in the
Republican Party looked to succeed him. Traditionally, a congressional caucus
selected the party's presidential nominee, and the Republican caucus finally
settled on Secretary of Treasury William H. Crawford of Georgia. Condemning “King
Caucus” as undemocratic, three other Republicans, all ardent
nationalists, refused to withdraw from the race: Secretary of State John Quincy
Adams; John C. Calhoun, Monroe's secretary of war; and Henry Clay, the Speaker
of the House. None of these men bargained on the sudden rise of another
Republican candidate, Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans.
Because of his limited political experience, no one took Jackson's candidacy
seriously at first, including Jackson himself. But soon the general's
supporters and rivals began receiving reports of his unusual popularity. From
Cincinnati an observer wrote: “Strange! Wild! Infatuated! All for Jackson!”
Savvy politicians flocked to his standard, but it was the people who first made
Jackson a serious candidate.
The
Election of 1824
Calhoun dropped out of the race, but that still left four
candidates, none of whom received a majority of the popular vote. Jackson led
the field and finished first in the Electoral College with 99 votes. Adams had
84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. Under the Twelfth Amendment, the House was to
select a president from the top three candidates. Clay, though himself
eliminated, held enough influence as Speaker of the House to name the winner.
After he met privately with Adams, he rallied the votes in the House needed to
put Adams over the top. Two days later Adams announced that Clay would be his
new secretary of state, the usual stepping stone to the presidency. Jackson and
his supporters promptly charged that there had been a “corrupt bargain” between
Adams and Clay. Before Adams had even assumed office, the 1828 race was under
way. The election of 1824 shattered the old party system. Henry Clay and John
Quincy Adams began to organize a new party, known as the National Republicans, to
distinguish it from Jefferson's old party. Jackson's disappointed supporters
eventually called themselves Democrats. By the mid-1830s, the National
Republicans had given way to the Whigs, a political party that also
drew members from another party that flourished briefly, the Anti-Masons. (The
Anti-Masons had led a campaign against the Freemasons, or Masons, a fraternal
order whose members—including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin—shared
the Enlightenment belief in the power of reason but whose secret meetings and
rituals seemed aristocratic and undemocratic to many Americans.) The Democrats,
as the other major party, came together under the leadership of Andrew Jackson.
Once established, this second American party system dominated the nation's
politics until the 1850s.
Social
Sources of the New Politics
Why was it that a new political culture emerged in the
1820s? Both the revolution in markets and the Panic of 1819 played key roles.
The ensuing depression convinced many Americans that government policy had
aggravated, if not actually produced, hard times. As a result, they decided
that the government had a responsibility to relieve distress and promote
prosperity. For the first time, large numbers of Americans saw politics as
relevant to their daily lives. Agitation mounted, especially at the state
level, for government to enact relief for those in debt and provide other forms
of assistance. Elections soon became the means through which the majority
expressed its policy preferences by voting for candidates pledged to specific
programs. The older idea that representatives should be independent and vote
according to their best judgment gave way to the notion that representatives
were to carry out the will of the people, as expressed in the outcomes of
elections. With more citizens championing the “will of the people,” pressure
mounted to open up the political process. Most states eliminated property
qualifications for voting in favor of white manhood suffrage, under which all
adult white males were allowed to vote. Similarly, property requirements for
officeholders were reduced or dropped. Presidential elections became more
democratic as well. By 1832 South Carolina was the only state in which the
legislature rather than the voters still chose presidential electors. The
Anti-Masons pioneered the convention as a more democratic method of nominating
party candidates and approving a platform, and the other parties soon followed
suit. Furthermore, because a presidential candidate had to carry a number of
states in different sections of the country, the backing of a national party,
with effective state and local organizations, became essential. These
democratic winds of change affected European societies and eventually other
areas of the world, but in no other major country were such reforms achieved as
early, and with as little resistance, as in the United States. Suffrage
provides a good example. In Britain, in response to growing demonstrations and
the cautionary example of the French monarchy's overthrow in 1830, Parliament
approved the Reform Bill of 1832, which enfranchised a number of property
holders and gave Britain the broadest electorate in Europe. Yet in fact, only
about 15 percent of the adult males in Britain enjoyed the right of suffrage
after the bill's passage. In France the figure was less than 1 percent. The
democratic revolutions of 1848 championed universal male suffrage in France and
Prussia. Yet this ideal soon suffered setbacks. By 1852 the French republic had
been replaced by a monarchy under the emperor Louis Napoleon. And in Prussia,
the new constitution essentially negated universal male suffrage by dividing
the electorate into three classes according to wealth, a formula that enabled 5
percent of the voters to elect one-third of parliament. Belgium, which had the
most liberal constitution in Europe, did not approximate manhood suffrage until
1848. Even the second Reform Act (1867) in Britain enfranchised only about
one-third of the adult males. Likewise, the Latin American republics
established in the 1820s and 1830s imposed property requirements on voting or,
as Uruguay did, excluded certain occupational groups such as servants and
peasants from the suffrage. One exception was Mexico, where a number of states
adopted an extremely broad suffrage, but even there a new constitution in 1836
established a much more centralized state and sharply limited voting rights.
The most restricted suffrage existed in the republic of Haiti, where only army
officers and a few other privileged individuals enjoyed the franchise.
When the revolution of 1843 brought a new constitution
with mass-based suffrage, it met widespread resistance among elites, and the
government quickly failed. As the new reforms in the United States went into
effect, voter turnout soared. Whereas in the 1824 presidential election only 27
percent of eligible voters bothered to go to the polls, four years later the
proportion had more than doubled to 56 percent. In 1840, 78 percent of eligible
voters cast ballots, probably the highest turnout in American history. All
these developments worked to favor the rise of a new type of politician: one
whose life was devoted to party service and who often depended for his living
on public office. As the number of state-sponsored internal improvement
projects increased during the 1820s, so did the number of government jobs that
could support party workers. No longer was politics primarily the province of
the wealthy, who spent only part of their time on public affairs. Instead,
political leaders were more likely to come from the middle ranks of society,
especially those outside the South. Many became economically established after
entering politics, but as Franklin Plummer demonstrated, large sums of money
were not required to conduct a campaign. Indeed, a successful politician now
had to mingle with the masses and voice their feelings—requirements that put
the wealthy elite at a disadvantage. In many ways, Martin Van Buren epitomized
the new breed of politician. The son of a New York tavern keeper, Van Buren
lacked great oratorical skills or a magnetic personality. But he was a master
organizer and tactician, highly skilled at using the new party system. His
abilities eventually carried him to the White House. Unlike the Revolutionary
generation, who had regarded political parties as dangerous and destructive,
Van Buren argued that they were not only “inseparable from free governments”
but “in many and material respects … highly useful to the country.” While
conceding that political parties were subject to abuse, he stressed that
competing parties would watch one another and check abuses at the same time
that they kept the masses informed. Andrew Jackson was one of the first
political leaders to grasp the new politics in which the ordinary citizen was
celebrated as never before. “Never for a moment believe that the great body of
the citizens … can deliberately intend to do wrong,” he proclaimed. Party
leaders everywhere avoided aristocratic airs when on the stump. “I have always dressed
chiefly in Home spun when among the people,” one North Carolina member of
Congress explained. “If a Candidate be dressed Farmerlike he is well received
and kindly remembered by the inmates of the Log Cabin, and there is no
sensation among the children or the chickens.”
Martin Van Buren was nicknamed the “Little Magician,”
because he had mastered the skills of putting together political alliances.
Unlike the founding generation, Van Buren insisted that political parties were
“highly useful to the country.”
Politics became mass
entertainment, in which campaign hoopla often overshadowed the issues. Parties
used parades, glee clubs, massive rallies, and barbecues to rouse voters, and
treating to drinks became an almost universal campaign tactic. (“The way to
men's hearts is down their throats,” quipped one Kentucky vote-getter.)
Although politicians often talked about principles, political parties were
pragmatic organizations, intent on gaining and holding power. The Jacksonian
era has been called the Age of the Common Man, but such
democratic tendencies had distinct limits. Women and slaves were not allowed to
vote, nor could free African Americans (except in a few states, primarily in
the northeast) and Indians. Nor did the parties always deal effectively with
(or even address) basic problems in society. Still, Van Buren's insight was
perceptive. Popular political parties provided an essential mechanism for
peacefully resolving differences among competing interest groups, regions, and
social classes.
Jackson's
Rise to Power
The new democratic style of
politics first appeared on the state and local levels: Van Buren deftly working
behind the scenes in New York; Amos Kendall of Kentucky campaigning in favor of
debtor relief; Davy Crockett of Tennessee carefully dressed in frontier garb
and offering voters a drink from a jug of whiskey and a chew from a large plug
of tobacco. The national implications of these changes were not immediately
clear. When he assumed the presidency in 1825, John Quincy Adams might have
worked to create a mass-based party. But Adams, a talented diplomat and a great
secretary of state, possessed hardly a political bone in his body. Cold and
tactless, he could build no popular support for the ambitious and often
farsighted programs he proposed. His plans for the federal government to
promote not only manufacturing and agriculture but also the arts, literature,
and science left his opponents aghast. Nor would Adams take any steps to gain
re-election, though he earnestly desired it. Despite urgent pleas from Henry
Clay and other advisers, he declined to remove from federal office men who
actively opposed him. Since Adams refused to be a party leader, Clay undertook
to organize the National Republicans. But with a reluctant candidate at the top
of the ticket, Clay labored under serious handicaps. The new style of politics
came into its own nationally only when Andrew Jackson swept to power at the
head of a new party, the Democrats. Building a new party was a tricky business.
Because Jackson's coalition was made up of conflicting interests, “Old Hickory”
remained vague about his own position on many issues. Thus the campaign of 1828
soon degenerated into a series of personal attacks, splattering mud on all
involved. Aided by enormous majorities in the South, Jackson won handily. In
one sense the significance of the election was clear. It marked the beginning
of politics as Americans have practiced it ever since, with two disciplined
national parties actively competing for votes, an emphasis on personalities
over issues, and the resort to mass electioneering techniques. Yet in terms of
public policy, the meaning of the election was anything but clear. The people
had voted for Jackson as a national hero without any real sense of what he
would do with his newly won power.
President
of the People
Certainly the people looked for change. “I never saw such
a crowd here before,” Daniel Webster wrote as inauguration
day approached. “Persons have come 500 miles to see General Jackson, and they
really seem to think that the country is rescued from some dreadful danger!”
Some 15,000 supporters cheered wildly after Jackson was sworn in. “The Will of
the People the Supreme Law” reads the banner at this county election. One of
the few occasions when most of the men would assemble at the village, Election
Day remained an all-male event as well as a time of excitement, heated debate,
and boisterous celebration. As citizens give their oath to an election judge,
diligent party workers dispense free drinks, solicit support, offer party
tickets, and keep a careful tally of who has voted. Liquor and drinking are
prominently featured: one elector enjoys another round, a prospective voter who
is too drunk to stand is held up by a faithful party member, and on the right a
groggy partisan sports a bandage as a result of a political brawl. At the White
House reception pandemonium reigned as thousands of ordinary citizens pushed
inside to catch a glimpse of their idol. The new president had to flee after
being nearly crushed to death by well-wishers. The crowd trampled on the
furniture, broke glass, smashed mirrors, and ruined carpets and draperies. “It
was a proud day for the people,” boasted Amos Kendall, one of the new
president's advisers. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story was less thrilled: “I
never saw such a mixture. The reign of King Mob seemed triumphant.” Jackson's
stubborn determination shows clearly in this portrait by Asher Durand, painted
in 1835.
“His passions are terrible,” Jefferson noted. “When I was
President of the Senate, he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of
the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as
often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler now; he has been much
tried since I knew him, but he is a dangerous man.” Whether loved as a man of
the people or hated as a demagogue leading the mob, Jackson was the
representative of the new democracy. The first president from west of the
Appalachians, he moved as a young lawyer to the Tennessee frontier. He had a
quick mind but limited schooling and little use for learning; after his death a
family friend acknowledged that the general had never believed that the Earth
was round. A man of action, his decisiveness served him well as a soldier and
also in the booming economy around Nashville, where he established himself as a
large landowner and slaveholder. Tall and wiry, with flowing white hair,
Jackson carried himself with a soldier's bearing. His troops had nicknamed him
Old Hickory out of respect for his toughness, but that strength sometimes
became arrogance, and he could be vindictive and a bully. He was not a man to
provoke, as his reputation for dueling demonstrated. For all these flaws,
Jackson was a shrewd politician. He knew how to manipulate men and could be
affable or abusive as the occasion demanded. He would sometimes burst into a
rage to get his way with a hostile delegation, only to chuckle afterward, “They
thought I was mad.” He also displayed a keen sense of public opinion,
skillfully reading the shifting national mood. As the nation's chief executive,
Jackson defended the spoils system, under which public offices were awarded to
political supporters, as a democratic reform. Rotation in office, he declared,
would guard against insensitive bureaucrats who presumed that they held their
positions by right. The cabinet, he believed, existed more to carry out his
will than to offer counsel, and throughout his term he remained a strong
executive who insisted on his way—and usually got it.
The
Political Agenda in the Market Economy
Jackson took office at a time when the market economy was
spreading through America and the nation's borders were expanding
geographically. The three major problems his administration faced were directly
caused by the resulting growing pains. Democratic reforms of the 1820s and
1830s brought a new sort of politician to prominence, one whose life was
devoted to party service and whose living often depended on public office. This
cartoon from 1834 shows the downside of the new situation. Andrew Jackson
sports the wings, horns, and tail of a devil as he dangles the rewards of
various political offices above a clamoring group of eager job-seekers. First,
the demand for new lands put continuing pressure on Indians, whose valuable
cornfields and hunting grounds could produce marketable commodities like cotton
and wheat. Second, as the economies of the North, South, and West became more
specialized, their rival interests forced a confrontation over the tariff and
whether South Carolina could nullify that federal law. And finally, the booming
economy focused attention on the role of credit and banking in society and on
the new commercial attitudes that were a central part of the developing market
economy. The president attacked all three issues in his characteristically
combative style.
Democracy and Race
As a planter Jackson benefited from the international
demand for cotton that was drawing new lands into the market. He had gone off
to the Tennessee frontier in 1788, a rowdy, ambitious young man who could
afford to purchase only one slave. Caught up in the get-rich-quick mania of the
frontier, he became a prominent land speculator, established himself as a
planter, and by the time he became president owned nearly 100 slaves. His
popularity derived not only from defeating the British but also from opening
extensive tracts of valuable Indian lands to white settlement. Through military
fighting and treaty negotiating, he was personally responsible for obtaining
about a third of Tennessee for the United States, three-quarters of Florida and
Alabama, a fifth of Georgia and Mississippi, and a tenth of Kentucky and North
Carolina. Even so, in 1820 an estimated 125,000 Indians remained east of the
Mississippi River.
In the Southwest the Choctaws, Creeks, Cherokees,
Chickasaws, and Seminoles retained millions of acres of prime agricultural land
in the heart of the cotton kingdom. Led by Georgia, southern states demanded
that the federal government clear these titles. In response Monroe in 1824
proposed to Congress that the remaining eastern tribes be relocated west of the
Mississippi River. As white pressure for removal intensified, a shift in the
attitude toward Indians and race increasingly occurred. Previously most whites
had attributed cultural differences among whites, blacks, and Indians to the
environment. After 1815 the dominant white culture stressed “innate”
racial differences that could never be erased. A growing number of
Americans began to argue that Indians were by nature inferior savages,
obstacles to progress because they were incapable of adopting white ways.
Accommodate
or Resist?
That argument placed Indians and other minorities in the
Old Southwest in a difficult position. During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries the region reflected a multiracial character, because Indians,
Spanish, French, and Africans had all settled there. The intermixture of
cultures could be seen in the garb of the Creek Indian chief William McIntosh,
who adopted a style of dress that reflected both his Indian and white heritage.
McIntosh's father was a Scot, his mother a Creek, his wife a Cherokee—and
McIntosh himself had allied his people with Andrew Jackson's forces during the
War of 1811. But not long after he signed a treaty for the cession of Creek
lands in 1825, Creeks who believed that McIntosh had betrayed the tribe's
interest murdered him. As southern whites increased their clamor for Indian
removal, similar tensions among various tribal factions increased. Among the
Seminoles, mixed-bloods (those with white as well as Indian ancestry) took the
lead in urging military resistance to any attempt to expel them. By contrast,
mixed-bloods in the Cherokee nation led by John Ross advocated a program of
accommodation by adopting white ways to prevent removal. After a bitter
struggle Ross prevailed, and in 1827 the Cherokees adopted a written
constitution modeled after that of the United States. They also enacted the
death penalty for any member who sold tribal lands to whites without consent of
the governing general council. Developing their own alphabet, they published a
bilingual newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix. Similarly, the
neighboring Creeks moved to centralize authority by strengthening the power of
the governing council at the expense of local towns. They, too, made it illegal
for individual chiefs to sell any more land to whites. The division between
traditionalists and those favoring accommodation reflected the fact that
Indians, too, had been drawn into a web of market relationships. As more
Cherokee families began to sell their surplus crops, they ceased to share
property communally as in the past. Cherokee society became more stratified and
unequal, just as white society had, and economic elites dominated the tribal
government. Women's traditional economic role was transformed as well, as men
now took over farming operations, previously a female responsibility. As the
cotton boom spread, some Cherokees became substantial planters who owned large
numbers of black slaves and thousands of acres of cotton land. Largely of mixed ancestry, slaveholders were
wealthier, had investments in other enterprises such as gristmills and ferries,
raised crops for market, were more likely to read English, and were the driving
force behind acculturation. As cotton cultivation expanded among the Cherokees,
slavery became harsher and a primary means of determining status, just as in
southern white society. The general council passed several laws forbidding
intermarriage with African Americans and excluding African Americans and
mulattoes from voting or holding office. Ironically, at the same time that
white racial attitudes toward Indians were deteriorating, the Cherokees' racial
attitudes toward blacks were also hardening, paralleling the increased racism among
white Americans.
Trail
of Tears
As western land fever increased and racial attitudes
sharpened, Jackson prodded Congress to provide funds for Indian removal. He
watched sympathetically as the Georgia legislature overturned the Cherokee
constitution, declared Cherokee laws null and void, and decreed that tribal
members would be tried in state courts. In 1830 Congress finally passed a
removal bill.
But the Cherokees brought suit in federal court against
Georgia's actions. In 1832 in the case of Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme
Court sided with the Cherokees. Indian tribes had full authority over their
lands, wrote Chief Justice John Marshall in the opinion. Thus Georgia had no
right to extend its laws over Cherokee territory. Pronouncing Marshall's decision
“stillborn,” Jackson ignored the Court's edict and went ahead with plans for
removal. Although Jackson assured Indians that they could be removed only
voluntarily, he paid no heed when state governments harassed tribes into
surrendering lands. Under the threat of coercion, the Choctaws, Chickasaws, and
Creeks reluctantly agreed to move to tracts in present-day Oklahoma. In the process,
land-hungry schemers cheated tribal members out of as much as 90 percent of
their land. The Cherokees held out longest, but to no avail. To deal with more
pliant leaders of the tribe, Georgia authorities kidnapped Chief John Ross, who led
the resistance to relocation, and threw him into jail. Ross was finally
released but not allowed to negotiate the treaty, which stipulated that the
Cherokees leave their lands no later than 1838. When that time came, most
refused to go. In response, President Martin Van Buren had the U.S. Army round
up resistant members and force them, at bayonet point, to join the westward
march. Of the 15,000 who traveled this Trail of Tears, approximately
one-quarter died along the way of exposure, disease, and exhaustion, including
Ross's wife. As for the western tracts awaiting the survivors, they were
smaller and generally inferior to the rich lands that had been taken from the
Cherokees. Some Indians chose resistance. In the Old Northwest a group of the
Sauk and Fox led by Black Hawk recrossed the Mississippi into Illinois in 1832,
only to be crushed by federal troops and the militia. More successful was the
military resistance of a minority of Seminoles led by Osceola. Despite his
death, they held out until 1842 in the Florida Everglades before being subdued
and removed. In the end only a small number of southern tribe members were able
to escape removal. In his Farewell Address in 1837 Jackson defended his policy
by piously asserting that the eastern tribes had been finally “placed beyond
the reach of injury or oppression, and that [the] paternal care of the General
Government will hereafter watch over them and protect them.” But Indians knew
the bitter truth of the matter. Without effective political power, they found
themselves at the mercy of the pressures of the marketplace and the hardening
racial attitudes of white Americans. As the Indian nations east of the
Mississippi battled racism and removal, disease stalked those in the West.
Smallpox, measles, cholera, and influenza followed in the wake of white traders
and settlers, triggering at least 27 epidemics—more recorded than in any
preceding century of contact—among Indians living west of the Mississippi. One
such scourge came on the heels of removal in 1837, when an American Fur Company
steamer unwittingly carried smallpox to trading posts along the upper Missouri.
It spread like wildfire across the Great Plains, and within a year the epidemic
had leapt the Rockies and headed south to Texas. All told, 50–95 percent of
those infected lost their lives, shattering families, disrupting native
economies, and demoralizing cultures during the same years that eastern nations
were being forced into the West. Indeed, the massive forced migration of
eastern Indians had profound consequences for plains peoples, who suddenly
faced increased competition for resources and often came to blows with Cheyennes,
Creeks, Chickasaws, Choctaws, and other formable newcomers.
INDIAN
REMOVAL
During
Jackson's presidency, the federal government concluded nearly 70 treaties with
Indian tribes, in the Old Northwest as well as in the South. Under their terms,
the United States acquired approximately 100 million acres of Indian land.
The region's challenges and misfortunes did not affect
native peoples equally. Some found their communities all but destroyed. Around
2,000 sedentary Mandans lived on the upper Missouri when smallpox arrived in
1837; before year's end fewer than 150 remained alive. Other agriculturalists
such as the Wichitas, Omahas, and Pawnees endured their bouts with disease but
increasingly found themselves hemmed in and weakened by immigrating peoples from
the east and by the expansionist Sioux. Still others reacted to the threats of
the 1830s through creative diplomacy. Most important, in the summer of 1840 the
Comanches and Kiowas of the Southern Plains and the Southern Cheyennes and
Arapahoes of the Central Plains laid aside a longstanding and bloody feud and
made peace. The “Great Peace” initiated a close trading relationship and
allowed all four peoples to safely pursue economic opportunities in a changing
West. For Cheyennes and Arapahos this meant unhampered access to buffalo-rich
territory in present-day Colorado, increasingly important as they sold hides at
Fort Bent to supply American markets. For Comanches and Kiowas the peace
provided the security necessary for their men to embark on long-distance raiding
expeditions deep into Mexico, expeditions at once dangerous and profitable.
Despite a series of calamities, then, Indian peoples continued to be the
masters of western North America well into the second half of the nineteenth
century.
Free
Blacks in the North
Unlike Indian removal, the rising discrimination against
free African Americans during this period did not depend directly on
presidential action. Still, it was Jackson's Democratic party, which was in the
vanguard of promoting white equality, that was also the most strongly
proslavery and the most hostile to black rights. The intensifying racism that
accompanied the emergence of democracy in American life bore down with
particular force on free African Americans. “The policy and power of the national
and state governments are against them,” commented one northerner. “The popular
feeling is against them—the interests of our citizens are against them.” Before
the Civil War the free black population remained small: only about 171,000 in
the North in 1840, about a quarter of whom were mulattoes. Although those
numbers amounted to less than 2 percent of the North's population, most states
enacted laws to keep African Americans in an inferior position. (For a
discussion of free African Americans in the South, see Chapter 13.) Most black
northerners lacked meaningful political rights. Black men could vote on equal
terms with whites in only five New England states. New York imposed a property
requirement only on black voters, which disfranchised the vast majority. In New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, African-American men lost the right to
vote after having previously enjoyed that privilege. Black northerners also
lacked the basic civil rights that whites enjoyed. Five states prohibited them
from testifying against whites, and either law or custom excluded African
Americans from juries everywhere except Massachusetts. In addition, several
western states passed black exclusion laws prohibiting free African Americans
from immigrating into the state. Though seldom enforced, these laws allowed for
harassing the African-American population in times of social stress. The Free
states also practiced segregation, or the physical
separation of the races. African Americans sat in separate sections on public
transportation. They could not go into most hotels and restaurants, and, if
permitted to enter theaters and lecture halls, they squeezed into the corners
and balconies. White churches assigned blacks separate pews and arranged for
them to take communion after white members. Virtually every community excluded
black children from the public schools or forced them to attend overcrowded and
poorly funded separate schools. One English visitor commented that “we see, in
effect, two nations—one white and another black—growing up together … but never
mingling on a principle of equality.” Discrimination pushed African-American
males into the lowest-paying and most unskilled jobs: servants, sailors,
waiters, and common laborers. In Philadelphia in 1838, 80 percent of employed
black males were unskilled laborers, and three of five black families had less
than $60 total wealth.
African American women normally continued working after
marriage, mostly as servants, cooks, laundresses, and seamstresses, because
their wages were critical to the family's economic survival. Blacks were
willing strikebreakers, because white workers, fearing economic competition and
loss of status, were overtly hostile and excluded them from trade unions. A
number of anti-black riots erupted in northern cities during these years.
Driven into abject poverty, free blacks in the North suffered from an
inadequate diet, were more susceptible to disease, and in 1850 had a life
expectancy 8 to 10 years less than that of whites.
The
African-American Community
Free blacks had long suffered from such oppression and
injustice. Between the Revolution and the War of 1812 they had responded by
founding schools, churches, and mutual aid societies to sustain
their communities. Some, such as Paul Cuffe, sought to escape white prejudice
entirely by establishing settlements of free blacks in West Africa. The Quaker
son of a West African father and a Wampanoag Indian mother, Cuffe became a sea
captain, and in 1816 his merchant ship brought 38 free black New Englanders to
settle in West Africa. Cuffe's venture drew white sympathizers who formed the American
Colonization Society (ACS) and founded Liberia in West Africa in
1821–1822. Several state legislatures in the North and the upper South as well
as all the major Protestant churches endorsed ACS plans to encourage free black
emigration, but its members were an unlikely and unstable coalition. Some
opposed slavery and hoped that colonization would encourage manumissions and
gradual emancipation, while others believed that ridding the nation of free
blacks would make it easier for slavery to flourish. Even as white support for
colonization swelled during the 1820s, black enthusiasm for emigration
diminished. Many African-American leaders in the North were turning to more confrontational
tactics: they advocated resistance to slavery and condemned racism and
inequality. Among the most outspoken of this new, more militant generation was David
Walker, whose Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World
(1829) denounced colonization and urged slaves to use violence to end
bondage.
Racism
Strikes a Deeper Root
What prompted greater militancy among African Americans
after 1820s was also the growth of an increasingly virulent racism among
whites. Ironically, the success of efforts to promote education, religious
piety, and temperance within the free black community threatened many
lower-class whites and intensified their resentment of African Americans. That
animosity found vent in race riots, which erupted in Pittsburgh, Boston, Cincinnati,
and New Haven. The racist attitudes of the day were very much reflected in
popular culture, nowhere more than in minstrel shows, the most popular
form of entertainment in Jacksonian America. Originating in the 1830s and
1840s, minstrel shows featured white
actors performing in blackface. Although popular
throughout the country, minstrelsy's primary audience was in northern cities.
Its basic message was that African Americans could not cope with freedom and
therefore did not belong in the North. Enslaved African Americans were
portrayed as happy and contented, whereas free black Americans were caricatured
either as strutting dandies or as helpless ignoramuses. Drawing its patrons
from workers, Irish immigrants, and the poorer elements in society, minstrelsy
assured these white champions of democracy that they remained superior. The
unsettling economic, social, and political changes of the Jacksonian era
heightened white Americans' fear of failure, which stimulated racism. The
popular yet unrealistic expectation was that any white man might become rich.
Yet in fact, 20 percent or more of white adult males of this era never
accumulated any property. Their lack of success encouraged them to relieve
personal tensions through increased hostility to their black neighbors. Subjecting black Americans to legal
disabilities ensured that even the poorest whites would enjoy an advantage in
the race for wealth and status.
“The prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the
states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists,”
Tocqueville noted.
The power of racism in Jacksonian America stemmed, at
least in part, from the fact that equality remained part of the nation's creed
while it steadily receded as a social reality.
The Nullification Crisis
Removal and racism provided one answer to the question of
who would be given equality of opportunity in America's new democracy. Indians and
African Americans would not. The issue of nullification raised a different,
equally pressing question. As the market revolution propelled the economies of
the North, South, and West toward increased specialization, how would various
regions or interest groups accommodate their differences?
The
Growing Crisis in South Carolina
The depression of 1819 struck hard at South Carolina. And
even when prosperity returned to the rest of the nation, many of the state's
cotton planters still suffered. With lands exhausted from years of cultivation,
they could not compete with the fabulous yields of frontier planters in Alabama
and Mississippi. Increasingly, South Carolinians viewed federal tariffs as the
cause of their miseries. When Congress raised the duty rates in 1824, they
assailed the tariff as an unfair tax that raised the prices of goods they
imported while benefiting other regions of the nation. Other southern states
opposed the 1824 tariff as well, though none so vehemently as South Carolina. The
one state in which black inhabitants outnumbered whites, South Carolina had
been growing more sensitive about the institution of slavery. In Charleston
white anxieties fixed on Denmark Vesey, a literate,
well-traveled, free black carpenter. On the flimsiest evidence, much of it
extracted by torture, whites accused Vesey and slaves from neighboring
plantations of plotting to seize and then burn down the city. Although the
accused denied the charges, authorities hanged Vesey and 34 other black men and
banished 37 others from the state. But white South Carolinians worried that
other undetected conspirators lurked in their midst. As an additional measure
of security, the state's leaders pushed for stronger constitutional protection
of slavery. After all, supporters of high tariffs had already claimed that the
“implied powers” of the Constitution gave them the right to promote manufacturing.
What was to stop this same broad interpretation from being used to end slavery?
“In contending against the tariff, I have always felt that we were combatting
against the symptom instead of the disease,” argued Chancellor William Harper
of South Carolina. “Tomorrow may witness [an attempt] to relieve … your
slaves.” When Congress raised the duty rates still higher in 1828 with the
so-called Tariff of Abominations, South Carolina's legislature published
the South
Carolina Exposition and Protest, which outlined for the first time the theory
of nullification. Only later was it revealed that its author was
Jackson's own vice president, John C. Calhoun. Educated at Yale and at a
distinguished law school, John C. Calhoun was the most impressive intellect of
his political generation. During the 1820s the South Carolina leader made a
steady journey away from nationalism toward an extreme states' rights position.
When he was elected Jackson's vice president, South Carolinians assumed that
tariff reform would soon be enacted. But Jackson and Calhoun quarreled, and
Calhoun lost all influence in the administration. In his theory of nullification
Calhoun addressed the problem of how to protect the rights of a minority in a
political system based on the rule of the majority. The Union, he argued, was a
compact among sovereign states. Thus the people of each state, acting in
special popular conventions, had the right to nullify any federal law that
exceeded the powers granted to Congress under the Constitution. The law would
then become null and void in that state. In response, Congress could either
repeal the law or propose a constitutional amendment expressly giving it the
power in question. If the amendment was ratified, the nullifying state could
either accept the decision or exercise its ultimate right as a sovereign state
and secede from the Union. When Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina outlined
Calhoun's theory in the Senate in 1830, Senator Daniel Webster of
Massachusetts replied sharply that the Union was not a compact of sovereign
states. The people and not the states, he argued, had created the Constitution.
“It is the people's constitution, the people's government, made for the people,
made by the people, and answerable to the people.” Webster also insisted that
the federal government did not merely act as the agent of the states but had
sovereign powers in those areas in which it had been delegated responsibility.
Finally, Webster endorsed the doctrine of judicial review, which gave the
Supreme Court authority to determine the meaning of the Constitution.
The
Nullifiers Nullified
When Congress passed another tariff in 1832 that failed
to give the state any relief, South Carolina's legislature called for the
election of delegates to a popular convention, which overwhelmingly adopted an
ordinance in November that declared the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 “null, void,
and no law, nor binding upon this state, its officers or citizens” after
February 1, 1833. Jackson, who had spent much of his life defending the nation,
was not about to tolerate any defiance of his authority or the federal
government's. In his Proclamation on Nullification, issued in December 1832, he
insisted that the Union was perpetual. Under the Constitution, there was no
right of secession. To reinforce Jackson's announced determination to enforce
the tariff laws, Congress passed the Force Bill, reaffirming the
president's military powers. Yet Jackson was also a skillful politician. At the
same time that he threatened South Carolina, he urged Congress to reduce the
tariff rates. With no other state willing to follow South Carolina's lead,
Calhoun reluctantly agreed to a compromise tariff, which Jackson signed on
March 1, 1833, the same day he signed the Force Bill. South Carolina's
convention repealed the nullifying ordinance, and the crisis passed. Calhoun's
doctrine had proved too radical for the rest of the South. Yet the controversy
convinced many southerners that they were becoming a permanent minority. “It is
useless and impracticable to disguise the fact,” concluded nullifier William
Harper, “that we are divided into slave-holding and non-slaveholding states,
and this is the broad and marked distinction that must separate us at last.” As
that feeling of isolation grew, it was not nullification but the threat of
secession that ultimately became the South's primary weapon.
The
Bank War
Jackson understood well the
political ties that bound the nation. He grasped much less firmly the economic
and financial connections that linked different regions of the country through
banks and national markets. In particular the president was suspicious of the
national bank and the power it possessed. His clash with the Second
Bank of the United States brought on the greatest crisis of his
presidency.
The
National Bank and the Panic of 1819
Chartered by Congress in 1816 for a 20-year period, the
Second Bank of the United States at first suffered from woeful mismanagement.
During the frenzy of speculation between 1816 and 1818, it recklessly
overexpanded its operations. Then it turned about-face and sharply contracted
credit by calling in loans when the depression hit in 1819. Senator Thomas Hart
Benton of Missouri charged that the national bank foreclosed on so much
property that it owned entire towns. To many Americans the Bank had already
become a monster. The psychological effects of the Panic of 1819 were
almost as momentous as the economic. To many uneasy farmers and workers the
hard times seemed like punishment for losing sight of the old virtues of simplicity,
frugality, and hard work. For them banks became a symbol of the
commercialization of American society and the passing of a simpler way of life.
In 1823 Nicholas Biddle, a rich 37-year-old Philadelphia businessman,
became president of the national bank. Biddle was intelligent and thoroughly
familiar with the banking system, but he was also impossibly arrogant. Seeking
to restore the Bank's reputation, he set out to provide the nation with a sound
currency by regulating the amount of credit available in the economy. Government
revenues were paid largely in banknotes (paper money) issued by
state-chartered banks. Because the Treasury Department regularly deposited U.S.
funds in the national bank, the notes of state banks from all across the Union
came into its possession. If Biddle believed that a state bank was overextended
and had issued more notes than was safe, he presented them to that bank and
demanded they be redeemed in specie (gold or silver). Because banks did not
have enough specie reserves to back all the paper money they issued, the only
way a state bank could continue to redeem its notes was to call in its loans
and reduce the amount of its notes in circulation. This action had the effect
of lessening the amount of credit in the economy. But if Biddle felt that a
bank's credit policies were reasonable, he simply returned the state banknotes
to circulation without presenting them for redemption. Being the government's
official depository gave Biddle's bank enormous power over state banks and over
the economy. Under Biddle's direction the Bank became a financial colossus: it
had 29 branches and made 20 percent of the country's loans, issued one-fifth of
the total banknotes, and held fully a third of all deposits and specie.
Yet for the most part, Biddle used the Bank's enormous power responsibly to
provide the United States a sound paper currency, which the expanding economy
needed. Although the Bank had strong support in the business community, workers
complained that they were often paid in depreciated state banknotes. Such notes
could be redeemed for only a portion of their face value, a practice that in
effect cheated workers out of part of their wages. Those workers called for a “hard
money” currency of only gold and silver. Hard money advocates
viewed bankers and financiers as profiteers who manipulated the paper money
system to enrich themselves at the expense of honest, hardworking farmers and
laborers. Jackson's own experiences left him with a deep distrust of banks and
paper money. In 1804 his Tennessee land speculations had brought him to the
brink of bankruptcy, from which it took years of painful struggle to free
himself.
Reflecting on his personal situation, he became convinced
that banks and paper money threatened to corrupt the Republic. As President
Jackson called for reform of the banking system from time to time, but Biddle
refused even to consider curbing the Bank's powers. Already distracted by the
nullification controversy, Jackson warned Biddle not to inject the bank issue
into the 1832 campaign. When Biddle went ahead and applied for a renewal of the
Bank's charter in 1832, four years early, Jackson was furious. “The Bank is
trying to kill me,” he stormed to Van Buren, “but I will kill it.” Despite the
president's opposition, Congress passed a recharter bill in the summer of 1832.
Immediately Jackson vetoed it as unconstitutional, rejecting Chief Justice
Marshall's ruling in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) that Congress had the right
to establish the Bank. Condemning the Bank as an agent of special privilege,
the president pledged to protect “the humble members of society—the farmer,
mechanics, and laborers. The message completely ignored the Bank's vital
services in the economy.
The
Bank Destroyed
When Congress failed to override Jackson's veto, the
recharter of the Bank became a central issue of the 1832 campaign. Jackson's
opponent was Henry Clay, a National Republican who eagerly accepted the
financial support of Biddle and the national bank. Clay went down to defeat,
and once re-elected, Jackson was determined to destroy the Bank. A private
corporation should not possess the power to influence government policy and the
economy, he believed. And he was justly incensed over the Bank's heavy-handed
attempt to influence the election. To cripple the Bank, the president simply
ordered all the government's federal deposits withdrawn. Because such an act
clearly violated federal law, Jackson was forced to transfer one secretary of
the treasury and fire another before he finally found in Roger Taney someone
willing to take the job and carry out the edict. Taney (pronounced “Taw-ney”)
began drawing against the government's funds to pay its debts while depositing
new revenues in selected state banks. Biddle fought back by deliberately precipitating
a brief financial panic in 1833. “Go to Biddle,” Jackson snapped to
businesspeople seeking relief. “I never will restore the deposits. I never will
recharter the United States Bank, or sign a charter for any other bank.”
Eventually Biddle had to relent, and Jackson's victory was complete. When the
Bank's charter expired in 1836, no national banking system replaced it.
Instead, Jackson continued depositing federal revenues in selected state banks.
Democrats controlled a large majority of these “pet banks.”
Jackson's
Impact on the Presidency
Jackson approached the end of his administration in
triumph. He had seen Indian removal nearly to completion; he had confounded the
nullifiers; and he had destroyed “Monster Bank.” In the process,
Jackson immeasurably enlarged the power of the presidency. “The President is
the direct representative of the American people,” he lectured the Senate when
it opposed him. “He was elected by the people, and is responsible to them.”
With this declaration, Jackson redefined the character of the presidential
office and its relationship to the people. Jackson also converted the veto into
an effective presidential power. During his two terms in office he vetoed 12
bills, compared with only 9 for all previous presidents combined. And whereas
his predecessors had vetoed bills only on strict constitutional grounds,
Jackson felt free to block laws simply because he thought them bad policy. The
threat of such action became an effective way to shape legislation to his
liking, which fundamentally strengthened the power of the president over
Congress. The development of the modern presidency began with Andrew Jackson.
“Van
Ruin's” Depression
With the controls of the national bank removed, state
banks rapidly expanded the amount of paper money in circulation. The total
value of banknotes jumped from $82 million in January 1835 to $120 million in
December 1836. As the currency expanded, so did the number of banks: from 329
in 1829 to 788 in 1837. A spiraling inflation set in as prices rose 50 percent
after 1830 and interest rates by half as much. As prices rose sharply, so did
speculative fever. By 1836 land sales, which had been only $2.6 million four
years earlier, approached $25 million. Buyers purchased almost all these lands
entirely on credit with banknotes, many of which had little value. Settlers
seeking land poured into the Southwest, and as one observer wryly commented,
“under this stimulating process prices rose like smoke.” In an attempt to slow
the economy, Jackson issued the Specie Circular in July 1836, which
decreed that the government would accept only specie for the purchase of public
land. Land sales drastically declined, but the speculative pressures in the
economy were already too great. During Jackson's second term, his opponents had
come together in a new party, the Whigs. Led by Henry Clay they
charged that “King Andrew I” had dangerously concentrated power in the
presidency. The Whigs also embraced Clay's “American System,” designed to spur
national economic development and particularly manufacturing. To do this the
Whigs advocated a protective tariff, a national bank, and federal aid for
internal improvements. In 1836 the Democrats nominated Martin Van Buren who
triumphed over three Whig sectional candidates. Van Buren had less than two
months in office to savor his triumph before the speculative mania collapsed,
and with it the economy. After a brief recovery the bottom fell out of the
international cotton market in 1839, and the country entered a serious depression.
Arising from causes that were worldwide, the depression demonstrated how deeply
the market economy had penetrated American society. Thousands of workers were
unemployed, and countless businesses failed. Nationally wages fell 30 to 50
percent. “Business of all kinds is completely at a stand,” wrote one business
leader in 1840, “and the whole body politic sick and infirm, and calling aloud
for a remedy.”
The
Whigs' Triumph
With the nation stuck in
the worst depression of the century, the Whigs approached the election of 1840
in high spirits. To oppose Van Buren, they turned to William Henry Harrison,
the military leader who had won fame defeating the Shawnee Indians at
Tippecanoe. Using the democratic electioneering techniques that Jackson's
supporters had first perfected, they portrayed Harrison as a man of the people
while painting Van Buren as an aristocrat who wore a corset, ate off gold
plates with silver spoons, and used cologne. Shades of Franklin Plummer! Whig
rallies featured hard cider and log cabins to reinforce Harrison's image as a
man of the people. Born into one of Virginia's most aristocratic families, he
lived in a 16-room mansion in Ohio. But the Whig campaign, by portraying the
election as a contest between aristocracy and democracy, was perfectly attuned
to the prevailing national spirit. Both parties used parades, barbecues,
liberty pole raisings, party songs, and mass meetings to stir up enthusiasm.
Deeming themselves the party of morality, Whigs appealed directly to women for
support, urging them to become politically informed in order to instruct their
husbands. Women attended Whig rallies, conducted meetings, made speeches, and
wrote campaign pamphlets, many activities that before had been solely the
duties of men. Democrats had no choice but to eventually follow suit. Just as
the Panic of 1819 had roused the voters to action, the depression and the two
parties' response to it sparked mass interest. The result was a record turnout,
as some 900,000 new voters were mobilized between 1836 and 1840 and nearly
four-fifths of the eligible voters went to the polls. Although the popular vote
was fairly close (Harrison led by about 150,000 votes out of 2.4 million cast),
in the Electoral College Harrison won an easy victory, 234 to 60. The “log
cabin” campaign marked the final transition from the deferential
politics of the Federalist era to the egalitarian politics that had emerged in
the wake of the Panic of 1819. As the Democratic Review conceded after the
Whigs' victory in 1840, “We have taught them how to conquer us.”
The
Jacksonian Party System
The social and economic
strains of an expanding nation directly shaped the new political system. Whigs
and Democrats held different attitudes toward the changes brought about by the
market, banks, and commerce.
Democrats,
Whigs, and the Market
The Democrats tended to view society as a continuing
conflict between “the people”—farmers, planters, and workers—and a set of
greedy aristocrats. The last group was not Europe's landed aristocrats, of
course, but a “paper money aristocracy” of bankers and investors, who
manipulated the banking system for profit. For Democrats, the Bank War became a
battle to restore the old Jeffersonian republic with its values of simplicity,
frugality, hard work, and independence. Jackson understood the dangers that
private banks posed to a democratic society. Yet Democrats, in effect, wanted
the rewards of the market without sacrificing the features of a simple agrarian
republic. They wanted the wealth and goods that the market offered without the
competitive, changing society, the complex dealings, the dominance of urban
centers, and the loss of independence that came with it. Whigs were more
comfortable with the market. They envisioned no conflict between farmers and
mechanics on the one hand and businesspeople and bankers on the other. Economic
growth would benefit everyone by creating jobs, stimulating demand for
agricultural products, and expanding opportunity. The government's
responsibility was to provide a well-regulated economy that guaranteed
opportunity for citizens of ability. In such an economy, banks and corporations
were not only useful but necessary. Whigs and Democrats also disagreed over how
active government should be. Despite Andrew Jackson's inclination to be a
strong president, Democrats as a rule believed in limited government.
Government's role in the economy was to promote competition by destroying
monopolies and special privileges. In Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge
(1837) the Supreme Court strengthened the vision of an expanding capitalistic
society undergirded by free competition. At issue was whether in authorizing
construction of a free bridge Massachusetts violated the rights of the owners
of a nearby toll bridge. Declaring that the public interest was the overriding
concern, Chief Justice Roger Taney, whom Jackson had
appointed to succeed John Marshall, struck down the idea of implied monopolies.
The Court thus sought to promote equality of opportunity and economic
progress. In keeping with this philosophy of limited government, Democrats also
rejected the idea that moral beliefs were the proper sphere of government
action. Religion and politics, they believed, should be kept clearly separate,
and they generally opposed humanitarian legislation as an interference with
personal freedom. But they supported debtor relief, which in their view curbed
the wealthy aristocrats who tyrannized the common worker. By contrast, the
Whigs viewed government power positively. They believed that it should be used to
protect individual rights and public liberty and that it had a special role
when individual effort was ineffective. By regulating the economy and
competition, the government could ensure equal opportunity. Indeed, for Whigs
the concept that the government would promote the general welfare went beyond
the economy. Northern Whigs in particular also believed that government power
should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country. They were much more
likely to favor temperance or antislavery legislation and aid to education.
Whigs portrayed themselves not only as the party of prosperity but also as the
party of respectability and proper behavior.
The
Social Bases of the Two Parties
In some ways the social makeup of the two parties was
similar. To be competitive Whigs and Democrats both had to have significant
support among farmers, the largest group in society, and workers. Neither party
could carry an election by appealing exclusively to the rich or the poor.
But the Whigs enjoyed disproportionate strength among the
business and commercial classes, especially following the Bank War. Whigs
appealed to planters who needed credit to finance their cotton and rice trade
in the world market, to farmers who were eager to sell their surpluses, and to
workers who wished to improve their social position. Democrats attracted
farmers isolated from the market or uncomfortable with it, workers alienated
from the emerging industrial system, and rising entrepreneurs who wanted to
break monopolies and open the economy to newcomers like them. The Whigs were
strongest in the towns, cities, and rural areas that were fully integrated into
the market economy, whereas Democrats dominated areas of semisubsistence
farming that were more isolated and languishing economically. Attitude
toward the market, rather than economic position, was more important in
determining party affiliation. Whigs drew strongly from the business
and commercial classes who were at home in the marketplace and eager to improve
themselves. Especially in the North, Whigs believed that government power
should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country.
Religion and ethnic
identities also shaped partisanship. As the self-proclaimed “party of
respectability,” Whigs attracted the support of high-status native-born church
groups, including the Congregationalists and the Unitarians in New England and
Presbyterians and Episcopalians elsewhere. The party also attracted immigrant
groups that most easily merged into the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture, such
as the English, Welsh, and Scots. Democrats, in contrast, recruited more
Germans and Irish, whose more lenient observance of the Sabbath and (among
Catholics) use of parochial schools generated native-born hostility. Democrats
appealed to the lower-status Baptists and Methodists, particularly in states
where they earlier had been subjected to legal disadvantages. Both parties also
attracted freethinkers and the unchurched, but the Democrats had the advantage,
because they resisted demands for temperance and Sabbatarian laws, such as the
prohibition of Sunday travel. In states where they could vote, African
Americans were solidly Whig in reaction to the Democratic Party’s strong racism
and hostility to black rights. In the Americas and in Europe the rise of democratic
governance and the spread of market economies developed in similar ways over
the same half-century. Andrew Jackson's triumph, with the common people
trampling the White House furniture, was only the latest in a series of
upheavals stretching back to the American and French Revolutions of the
eighteenth century. Latin America, also , experienced democratic revolutions.
From 1808 to 1821 Spain's American provinces declared their independence one by
one, taking inspiration from the writings of Jefferson and Thomas Paine as well
as the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Democracy did not always root
itself in the aftermath of these revolutions, but democratic ideology remained
a powerful social catalyst. In the United States, the parallel growth of
national markets and democratic institutions combined similar ups and downs. If
Jackson championed the cause of the “common people,” he also led the movement
to remove Indians from their lands. The poorest white American might vote for
“Old Hickory” and yet reassure himself that African Americans could never rise
as high as he did in an increasingly racist society. And the advance of the
market created social strains, including the increasing gap between the richest
and the poorest. Still, Americans were evolving a system of democratic politics
to deal with the conflicts of the new order. The new national parties, like the
new markets, became essential structures uniting the American nation. They
advanced an ideology of equality and opportunity, competed vigorously with one
another, and involved large numbers of ordinary Americans in the political
process. Along with the market, democracy became an integral part of American
life.
Chapter Overview
|
Key Terms
Stratified
– layered; in this case
according to class or social status. See page 207
Political
culture – patterns, habits,
institutions, and traits associated with a political system.
See page 207
Spoils
system – practice of rewarding
loyal party members with jobs in government. See page 211
Specie
– coined money of gold or
silver; also referred to as hard money or hard currency. In contrasts banknotes
or notes are paper money or paper currency. See
page 216
Depreciated
– decrease in value owing
to market conditions. See page 217
Inflation
– increase in the overall
price of goods and services over an extended period of time; or a similar
decrease over time of the purchasing power of money. See page 218
John
Quincy Adams – John Quincy Adams was an
American statesman who served as the sixth President of the United States from
1825 to 1829. He also served as a diplomat, a Senator and member of the House
of Representatives.
Andrew
Jackson/Old Hickory – Andrew
Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was the seventh President of the United
States (1829–1837). Nominated for president in 1824, Jackson narrowly lost to
John Quincy Adams. Jackson's supporters then founded what became the Democratic
Party. Nominated again in 1828, Jackson crusaded against Adams and the "corrupt
bargain" between Adams and Henry Clay he said cost him the 1824
election. Building on his base in the West and new support from Virginia and
New York he won by a landslide. His struggles with Congress were personified in
his personal rivalry with Henry Clay, whom Jackson deeply disliked, and who led
the opposition (the emerging Whig Party). As president, he faced a threat of
secession from South Carolina over the "Tariff of Abominations"
which Congress had enacted under Adams. In contrast to several of his immediate
successors, he denied the right of a state to secede from the union, or to nullify
federal law. The Nullification Crisis was defused when the tariff was amended
and Jackson threatened the use of military force if South Carolina (or any
other state) attempted to secede. Jackson's service in the War of 1812 against
the United Kingdom was conspicuous for bravery and success. When British forces
threatened New Orleans, Jackson took command of the defenses, including militia
from several western states and territories. He was a strict officer but was
popular with his troops. They said he was "tough as old hickory" wood
on the battlefield, and he acquired the nickname of "Old Hickory". In
the Battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815, Jackson's 5,000 soldiers won a
decisive victory over 7,500 British.
John
C. Calhoun – John Caldwell Calhoun
(March 18, 1782 – March 31, 1850) was a leading American politician and
political theorist during the first half of the 19th century. Calhoun began his
political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong
national government and protective tariffs. After 1830, his views evolved and
he became a greater proponent of states' rights, limited government,
nullification and free trade; as he saw these means as the only way to preserve
the Union. He is best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as
something positive, his distrust of majoritarianism, and for pointing the South
toward secession from the Union. Calhoun built his reputation as a political
theorist by his redefinition of republicanism to include approval of slavery
and minority rights, with the Southern States the minority in question.
To protect minority
rights against majority rule, he called for a "concurrent majority"
whereby the minority could sometimes block offensive proposals that a State
felt infringed on their sovereign power. Always distrustful of democracy, he
minimized the role of the Second Party System in South Carolina. Calhoun's
defense of slavery became defunct, but his concept of concurrent majority,
whereby a minority has the right to object to or even veto hostile legislation
directed against it, has been cited by other advocates of the rights of
minorities. Calhoun asserted that
Southern whites, outnumbered in the United States by voters of the more densely
populated Northern states, were one such minority deserving special protection
in the legislature. Calhoun also saw the increasing population disparity to be
the result of corrupt northern politics. Calhoun held major political offices,
serving terms in the United States House of Representatives, United States
Senate and as the seventh Vice President of the United States (1825–1832), as
well as secretary of war and state. He usually affiliated with the Democrats,
but flirted with the Whig Party and considered running for the presidency in 1824
and 1844. As a "war hawk", he agitated in Congress for the War of
1812 to defend American honor against Britain. Near the end of the war, he
successfully delayed a vote on US Treasury notes being issued, arguing that the
bill would not pass if the war were to end in the near future; the day of the
vote, Congress received word from New York that the war was over. As Secretary
of War under President James Monroe, he reorganized and modernized the War
Department, building powerful permanent bureaucracies that ran the department,
as opposed to patronage appointees and did so while trimming the requested
funding each year.
Henry
Clay/American System – Henry
Clay, Sr. (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852) was an American lawyer, politician,
and skilled orator who represented Kentucky in both the United States Senate
and House of Representatives. He served three different terms as Speaker of the
House of Representatives and was also Secretary of State from 1825 to 1829. He
lost his campaigns for president in 1824, 1832 and 1844. Clay was a dominant
figure in both the First and Second Party systems. As a leading war hawk in
1812, he favored war with Britain and played a significant role in leading the
nation to war in the War of 1812. In 1824 he ran for president and lost, but
maneuvered House voting in favor of John Quincy Adams, who made him secretary
of state as the Jacksonians denounced what they considered a "corrupt
bargain." He ran and lost again in 1832 and 1844 as the candidate
of the Whig Party, which he founded and usually dominated. Clay was the
foremost proponent of the American System, fighting for an increase in tariffs
to foster industry in the United States, the use of federal funding to build
and maintain infrastructure, and a strong national bank. He opposed the
annexation of Texas, fearing it would inject the slavery issue into politics.
Clay also opposed the Mexican-American War and the "Manifest Destiny"
policy of Democrats, which cost him votes in the close 1844 election. Dubbed
the "Great Pacificator," Clay brokered important compromises during
the Nullification Crisis and on the slavery issue. As part of the "Great
Triumvirate" or "Immortal Trio," along with his colleagues Daniel
Webster and John C. Calhoun, he was instrumental in formulating the
Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. He was viewed as the
primary representative of Western interests in this group, and was given the
names "Henry of the West" and "The Western Star." A
plantation owner, Clay held slaves during his lifetime but freed them in his
will. Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun helped to pass the Tariff of 1816 as part
of the national economic plan Clay called "The American System,"
rooted in Alexander Hamilton's American School. Described later by Friedrich
List, it was designed to allow the fledgling American manufacturing sector,
largely centered on the eastern seaboard, to compete with British manufacturing
through the creation of tariffs. After the conclusion of the War of 1812,
British factories were overwhelming American ports with inexpensive goods. To
persuade voters in the western states to support the tariff, Clay advocated
federal government support for internal improvements to infrastructure,
principally roads and canals. These internal improvements would be financed by
the tariff and by sale of the public lands, prices for which would be kept high
to generate revenue. Finally, a national bank would stabilize the currency and
serve as the nexus of a truly national financial system. Clay's American System
ran into strong opposition from President Jackson's administration. One of the
most important points of contention between the two men was over the Maysville
Road. Jackson vetoed a bill which would authorize federal funding for a project
to construct a road linking Lexington and the Ohio River, the entirety of which
would be in the state of Kentucky, because he felt that it did not constitute
interstate commerce, as specified in the Commerce Clause of the United States
Constitution.
John
Ross – John Ross (October 3,
1790 – August 1, 1866), also known as Guwisguwi (meaning in Cherokee a
"Little White Bird"), was the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation
from 1828–1866, serving longer in this position than any other person. He was
described as the Moses of his people. Ross influenced the former Indian nation
through such tumultuous events as the relocation to Indian Territory and the
American Civil War. John Ross was the son of a Cherokee mother and a Scottish
father. His mother and maternal grandmother were of mixed Scots-Cherokee
ancestry, since his maternal grandfather was another Scottish immigrant. As a
result, young John (one-eighth Cherokee by blood quantum) grew up bilingual and
bicultural, an experience that served him well when his parents decided to send
him to schools that served other mixed-blood Cherokees. After graduation, he
was appointed an Indian agent in 1811. During the War of 1812, he served as
adjutant of a Cherokee regiment under the command of Andrew Jackson. After the
Red Stick War ended, Ross demonstrated his business acumen by starting a
tobacco farm in Tennessee. In 1816, he founded a community known as Ross'
Landing on the Tennessee River (now modern-day Chattanooga, Tennessee). There,
he built a warehouse and trading post, as well as starting a ferry service.
Concurrently, John Ross developed a keen interest in Cherokee politics,
attracting the attention of the Cherokee elders, especially Principal Chiefs
Pathkiller and Charles R. Hicks, who, along with Major Ridge, became his political
mentors. Ross first went to Washington, D.C. in 1816 to as part of a Cherokee
delegation to negotiate issues of national boundaries, land ownership and white
encroachment. As the only delegate fluent in English, Ross became the principal
negotiator, despite his relative youth. When he returned to the Cherokee Nation
in 1817, he was elected to the National Council. He became council president in
the following year. The majority of the council were men like Ross, who were
wealthy, educated, English-speaking and of mixed blood. Even the traditionalist
full-blood Cherokees perceived that he had the skills necessary to contest the
white's demands that the Cherokees cede their land and move beyond the
Mississippi River. In this position, Ross' first action was to reject an offer
of $200,000 from the US Indian agent made for the Cherokees to voluntarily
relocate. Thereafter, Ross made more trips to Washington, even as white demands
intensified. In 1824, Ross boldly petitioned Congress for redress of Cherokee
grievances, the first time a tribe had ever shown the audacity to do such a
thing. Along the way, Ross built political support in the capital for the
Cherokee cause. Both Pathkiller and Charles R. Hicks died in January 1827.
Hicks' brother, William, was appointed interim chief. Ross and Major Ridge
shared responsibilities for the affairs of the tribe. William Hicks did not
impress the Cherokees as a leader. They elected Ross as permanent principal
chief in October 1828. He remained so until he died. The issue of removal split
the Cherokee Nation politically. Ross, backed by the majority, tried repeatedly
to stop white political powers from forcing the tribe to move. They became
known as the National Party. Others who came to believe that further resistance
would be futile, wanted to seek the best settlement they could get. They formed
the "Treaty Party" or "Ridge Party", led by Major Ridge.
The Treaty Party was convinced to sign the Treaty of New Echota on December 29,
1835, requiring the Cherokees to leave by 1838. Neither Ross nor the council
approved it, the Federal government regarded the treaty as valid. It would send
the Army to move those who did not depart by 1838 in an action known ever after
as the "Trail of Tears." About one-fourth of the Cherokees forced to
emigrate died along the trail. The dead included Ross' wife, Quatie. Ross tried
unsuccessfully to restore political unity after the arrival in Indian
Territory. Unknown people assassinated the leaders of the Treaty Party, except
for Stand Watie, who escaped and became Ross' most implacable foe. Soon, the
issue of slavery refueled the old division. The Treaty Party morphed into the
"Southern Party," while the National Party largely became the
"Union Party". Ross initially counseled neutrality, believing that
joining in the "white man's war" would be disastrous for the tribe.
After Union Forces abandoned their forts in Indian Territory, Ross reversed
himself and signed a treaty with the Confederacy.
Martin
Van Buren – Martin Van Buren (December
5, 1782 – July 24, 1862) was the eighth President of the United States
(1837–1841). Before his presidency, he was the eighth Vice President
(1833–1837) and the tenth secretary of state (1829–1831), both under Andrew
Jackson.
Van Buren was a key organizer
of the Democratic Party, a dominant figure in the Second Party System, and the
first president not of British or Irish descent—his family was Dutch. He was
the first president to have been born a United States citizen, since all of his
predecessors were born British subjects before the American Revolution. He is
the first president not to have spoken English as a first language, having
spoken only Dutch growing up. Van Buren was also the first president from the
state of New York. As Andrew Jackson's Secretary of State and then Vice
President, Van Buren was a key figure in building the organizational structure
for Jacksonian democracy, particularly in New York. As president, he did not
want the United States to annex Texas, an act which John Tyler would achieve
eight years after Van Buren's initial rejection. Between the bloodless
Aroostook War and the Caroline Affair, relations with Britain and its colonies
in Canada also proved to be strained. His administration was largely
characterized by the economic hardship of his time, the Panic of 1837. He was
scapegoated for the depression and called "Martin Van Ruin" by
political opponents. Van Buren was voted out of office after four years, losing
to Whig candidate William Henry Harrison. In the 1848 election Van
Buren ran unsuccessfully for president on a third-party ticket, the Free Soil
Party. Van Buren died fourteen years later at the age of seventy-nine.
Paul
Cuffe – Paul Cuffee or Paul Cuffe
(January 17, 1759 – September 9, 1817) was a Quaker businessman, sea captain,
patriot, and abolitionist. He was of Aquinnah Wampanoag and West African
Ashanti descent and helped colonize Sierra Leone. Cuffe built a lucrative
shipping empire and established the first racially integrated school in
Westport, Massachusetts. A devout Christian, Cuffe often preached and spoke at
the Sunday services at the multi-racial Society of Friends meeting house in
Westport, Massachusetts.[3] In 1813, he donated most of the money to build a
new meeting house. He became involved in the British effort to resettle freed
slaves, many of whom had moved from the US to Nova Scotia after the American
Revolution, to the fledgling colony of Sierra Leone. Cuffe helped establish The
Friendly Society of Sierra Leone, which provided financial support for the
colony.
Osceola/Seminoles
– Osceola (1804 – January
30, 1838), born as Billy Powell, became an influential leader of the Seminole
in Florida. Of mixed parentage, Creek, Scots-Irish, and English, he was raised
as a Creek by his mother, as the tribe had a matrilineal kinship system. They
migrated to Florida when he was a child, with other Red Stick refugees, after
their defeat in 1814 in the Creek Wars. In 1836, Osceola led a small band of
warriors in the Seminole resistance during the Second Seminole War, when the
United States tried to remove the tribe from their lands in Florida. He became
an adviser to Micanopy, the principal chief of the Seminole from 1825 to 1849.
Osceola led the war resistance until he was captured in September 1837 by deception,
under a flag of truce, when he went to a US fort for peace talks. Because of
his renown, Osceola attracted visitors as well as leading portrait painters. He died a few months
later in prison at Fort Moultrie in Charleston, South Carolina, of causes
reported as an internal infection or malaria. The Seminole are a Native
American people originally of Florida. The Seminole nation emerged in a process
of ethnogenesis out of groups of Native Americans; most significantly Creek
from what are now northern Muscogee. During their early decades, the Seminole
became increasingly independent of other Creek groups and established their own
identity. They developed a thriving trade network in the British and second
Spanish periods (roughly 1767–1821). The tribe expanded considerably during
this time, and was further supplemented from the late 18th century by free
black people and escaped enslaved people who settled near and paid tribute to
Seminole towns. The latter became known as Black Seminoles, although they kept
their own Gullah culture of the Low Country. They developed the
Afro-Seminole Creole language, which they spoke through the 19th century after
the move to Indian Territory. As the Seminole adapted to Florida environs, they
developed local traditions, such as the construction of open-air, thatched-roof
houses known as chickees. Historically the Seminole spoke Mikasuki and Creek,
both Muskogean languages. After the United States achieved independence, its
settlers increased pressure on the Seminole, leading to the Seminole Wars
(1818–1858). As a result of the wars and national policy, through 1842 most
Seminoles and Black Seminoles were removed to Indian Territory west of the
Mississippi River. During the American Civil War, most of the Oklahoma
Seminole allied with the Confederacy, after which they had to sign a new treaty
with the U.S., including freedom and tribal membership for the Black Seminole.
Today residents of the reservation are enrolled in the federally recognized Seminole
Nation of Oklahoma, while others belong to unorganized groups.
Black
Hawk/Sauk & Fox – Black
Hawk, Indian name Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak was the leader of a faction of
Sauk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) peoples. Black Hawk and his
followers contested the disposition of 50 million acres (20 million hectares)
of territory that had supposedly been granted to the United States by tribal
spokesmen in the Treaty of St. Louis in 1804. His decision to defy the
government and attempt to reoccupy tribal lands along the Rock River in
Illinois resulted in the brief but tragic Black Hawk War of 1832.
David
Walker/Appeal to Colored Citizens of the World (1829) – David Walker was an outspoken African-American
abolitionist and anti-slavery activist. In 1829, while living in Boston,
Massachusetts, he published An Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, a
call for black unity and self-help in the fight against oppression and
injustice. The work brought attention to the abuses and inequities of slavery
and the role of individuals to act responsibly for racial equality, according
to religious and political tenets. At the time, some people were outraged and
fearful of the reaction that the pamphlet would have. Many abolitionists
thought the views were extreme. Historians and liberation theologians cite the
Appeal as an influential political and social document of the 19th century.
Walker exerted a radicalizing influence on the abolitionist movements of his
day and inspired future black leaders and activists.
Denmark
Vesey – Denmark Vesey, (born c. 1767, probably St. Thomas, Danish
West Indies—died July 2, 1822, Charleston, S.C., U.S.), self-educated black who
planned the most extensive slave revolt in U.S. history (Charleston, 1822). Sold
as a boy in 1781 to a Bermuda slaver captain named Joseph Vesey, young Denmark,
who assumed his master’s surname, accompanied him on numerous voyages and in
1783 settled with his owner in Charleston.
Daniel
Webster – Daniel Webster, (born January 18, 1782, Salisbury, New
Hampshire, U.S.—died October 24, 1852, Marshfield, Massachusetts), American
orator and politician who practiced prominently as a lawyer before the U.S.
Supreme Court and served as a U.S. congressman (1813–17, 1823–27), a U.S.
senator (1827–41, 1845–50), and U.S. secretary of state (1841–43, 1850–52).
He is best known as an
enthusiastic nationalist and as an advocate of business interests during the
period of the Jacksonian agrarianism. After the nullification crisis had been
settled, Webster made overtures for a political alliance with Jackson, an
alliance that presumably would have brought Webster to the presidency as
Jackson’s successor. But the two men disagreed on many issues, especially on
the question of the Bank of the United States, which Jackson attacked as a dangerous
and undemocratic monopoly and which Webster served in the capacities of legal
counsel, director of the Boston branch, and Senate champion, along with Henry
Clay of Kentucky. Clay and Webster emerged as leaders of the Whig Party, a
rather heterogeneous group opposed to Jackson and the Democrats. The Whigs
failed to get the bank rechartered and thus lost the “Bank War.”
Nicholas
Biddle – Nicholas Biddle, (born
Jan. 8, 1786, Philadelphia—died Feb. 27, 1844, Philadelphia), financier who as
president of the Second Bank of the United States (1823–36) made it the first
effective central bank in U.S. history. He was Pres. Andrew Jackson’s chief
antagonist in a conflict (1832–36) that resulted in termination of the bank. As
president of the bank, Biddle sponsored policies that restrained the supply of
credit to the country’s banks; stabilized the investment, money, and discount
markets; regulated the money supply; and safeguarded government deposits.
Between 1832 and 1836 the bank came under the attack of Jackson’s Democratic
Party, which sought to eliminate it, while the Whigs supported it. After
Jackson won termination of the bank’s national charter in 1836, Biddle became
president of the rechartered Bank of the United States of Pennsylvania.
Roger
Taney – Roger Brooke Taney, (born March 17, 1777, Calvert County, Md.,
U.S.—died Oct. 12, 1864, Washington, D.C.), fifth chief justice of the Supreme
Court of the United States, remembered principally for the Dred Scott decision
(1857). He was the first Roman Catholic to serve on the Supreme Court. Throughout
his tenure in Washington, Taney had been an outspoken leader in the Democrats’
fight against the central bank, the Bank of the United States, which was widely
regarded as a tool of Eastern financial interests. Taney believed it had abused
its powers, and he strongly advised the President to veto the congressional
bill that would renew the bank’s charter and wrote much of the veto message; he
also recommended that government funds be withdrawn from the bank and be
deposited in a number of state banks. As a result of his role in the fight over
the Bank of the United States, Taney had become a national figure, and in 1833
President Jackson appointed him secretary of the treasury. But opposition to
Taney and his financial program was so strong that the Senate rejected him in
June 1834, marking the first time that Congress had refused to confirm a
presidential nominee for a Cabinet post. Despite powerful resistance, led by
such prominent politicians as Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun, and Daniel Webster,
Taney was sworn in as chief justice in March 1836. Although he had inherited
the conservative tradition of the Southern aristocracy and had supported
states’ rights, the Taney court did not discard John Marshall’s ideas of
federal supremacy. Taney believed firmly in divided sovereignty, but he also
believed it was the Supreme Court’s role to decide which powers should be
shared. Eventually, many of those who had opposed Taney’s appointment came to
respect him. One of the most important decisions for which the Taney court is
noted concerned rights granted by charters. The majority opinion in Charles
River Bridge v. Warren Bridge (1837) declared that rights not specifically
conferred could not be inferred from the language of a document. In this
decision Taney rejected the claim of a bridge company that the subsequent grant
by the state legislature of a charter to another bridge company impaired the
legislature’s charter to the first company.
William
Henry Harrison – William Henry Harrison, (born
February 9, 1773, Charles City county, Virginia [U.S.]—died April 4, 1841,
Washington, D.C., U.S.), ninth president of the United States (1841), whose
Indian campaigns, while he was a territorial governor and army officer, thrust
him into the national limelight and led to his election in 1840. He was the
oldest man, at age 67, ever elected president up to that time, the last
president born under British rule, and the first to die in office—after only
one month’s service. His grandson Benjamin Harrison was the 23rd president of
the United States (1889–93).
The
Cherokees/The Cherokee Phoenix – Cherokee, North American Indians of Iroquoian lineage who constituted
one of the largest politically integrated tribes at the time of European
colonization of the Americas. Their name is derived from a Creek word meaning
“people of different speech”; many prefer to be known as Keetoowah or Tsalagi.
They are believed to have numbered some 22,500 individuals in 1650, and they
controlled approximately 40,000 square miles (100,000 square km) of the
Appalachian Mountains in parts of present-day Georgia, eastern Tennessee, and
the western Carolinas at that time. The Cherokee Phoenix was the first
newspaper published by Native Americans in the United States and the first
published in a Native American language. The first issue was published in
English and Cherokee on February 21, 1828, in New Echota, capital of the
Cherokee Nation (present-day Georgia). The paper continued until 1834. The
Cherokee Phoenix was revived in the 20th century, and today it publishes on the
Web.
Indian
Removal Act/"Trail of Tears" – In 1830 Congress, urged on by President Andrew Jackson, passed the
Indian Removal Act which gave the federal government the power to relocate any
Native Americans in the east to territory that was west of the Mississippi
River. Though the Native Americans were to be compensated, this was not always
done fairly and in some cases led to the further destruction of many of the
already diminishing numbers of many of the eastern tribes. The Cherokee Nation
was allocated land in Georgia as a result of the 1791 treaty with the U.S.
Government. In 1828, not only did whites for settlement purposes desire their
land, but gold was discovered. Georgia tried to reclaim this land in 1830, but
the Cherokee protested and took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court
decided in favor of the Cherokee, however, the President and Congress forced
the Native Americans to give up their land. 1838 called in federal troops in to
“escort” approximately 15,000 Cherokee people to their new home in Indian
Territory. On the way, approx. 1/3 of the Cherokee people died. This event,
known to the Cherokee as “The Trail Where They Cried”, is better known as the Trail
of Tears in U.S. History textbooks.
Bank
War/Second Bank of the United States/Monster Bank – The Bank War refers to the political struggle that
developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States
(BUS) during the Andrew Jackson administration (1829–1837). Anti-Bank
Jacksonian Democrats were mobilized in opposition to the national bank’s
re-authorization on the grounds that the institution conferred economic
privileges on financial elites, violating U.S. constitutional principles of
social equality. The Jacksonians considered the Second Bank of the U.S. to be
an illegitimate corporation whose charter violated state sovereignty and
therefore it posed an implicit threat to the agriculture-based economy
dependent upon the U.S. southern states' widely practiced institution of
slavery. With the Bank charter due to expire in 1836, the President of the Bank
of the United States, acting like a central bank Nicholas Biddle, in alliance
with the National Republicans under Senator Henry Clay (KY) and Senator Daniel
Webster (MA), decided to make rechartering a referendum on the legitimacy of
the institution in the general election of 1832. When Congress voted to
reauthorize the Bank, Jackson, as incumbent and candidate in the race, promptly
vetoed the bill. His veto message justifying his action was a polemical
declaration of the social philosophy of the Jacksonian movement pitting
“farmers, mechanics and laborers” against the “monied interest” and arguing
against the Bank’s constitutionality. Pro-Bank National Republicans warned the
public that Jackson would abolish the Bank altogether if granted a second term.
In the presidential campaigns of 1832, the BUS served as the central issue in
mobilizing the opposing Jacksonian Democrats and National Republicans. Jackson
and Biddle personified the positions on each side. Jacksonians successfully
concealed the incompatibility of their “hard money” and “paper
money” factions in the anti-Bank campaign, allowing Jackson to score an
overwhelming victory against Henry Clay. Fearing economic reprisals from Biddle
and the Bank, Jackson moved swiftly to remove federal deposits from the
institution. In 1833, he succeeded in distributing the funds to several dozen
private banks throughout the country. The new Whig Party emerged in opposition
to his perceived abuse of executive power, officially censuring Jackson in the
Senate. In an effort to promote sympathy for the institution’s survival, Biddle
retaliated by contracting Bank credit, inducing a serious and protracted
financial downturn. A reaction set in throughout America’s financial and
business centers against Biddle’s economic warfare, compelling the Bank to
reverse its tight money policies. By the close of 1834, recharter was a “lost
cause.” Rather than permitting the Bank to go out of existence, Biddle arranged
its conversion to a state chartered corporation in Pennsylvania just weeks
before its federal charter expired in March 1836. This episode in the Bank’s
decline and fall ended in 1841 with liquidation of the institution. Jackson’s
campaign against the Bank had triumphed. Polemically, the veto message was “a
brilliant political manifesto” that called for the end of monied power in the
financial sector and a leveling of opportunity under the protection of the
executive branch. Jackson perfected his anti-Bank themes, pitting the idealized
“plain republican” and the “real people” – virtuous, industrious and free-
against a powerful financial institution – the “monster” Bank whose wealth was
purportedly derived from privileges bestowed by corrupt political and business
elites. To those who believed that power and wealth should be linked, the
message was unsettling. Daniel Webster charged Jackson with promoting class
warfare.
Whigs
– The Whig Party was a
political party active in the middle of the 19th century in the United States
of America. Four Presidents of the United States were members of the Whig
Party. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the
early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the
policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic Party. In particular,
the Whigs supported the supremacy of Congress over the Presidency and favored a
program of modernization and economic protectionism. This name was chosen to
echo the American Whigs of 1776, who fought for independence, and because
"Whig" was then a widely recognized label of choice for people who identified
as opposing tyranny. The Whig Party counted among its members such national political
luminaries as Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and their preeminent
leader, Henry Clay of Kentucky. In addition to Harrison, the Whig Party also
nominated war hero generals Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. In its two
decades of existence, the Whig Party had two of its candidates, William Henry
Harrison and Zachary Taylor, elected President. Both died in office. John Tyler
succeeded to the Presidency after Harrison's death, but was expelled from the
party. Millard Fillmore, who became President after Taylor's death, was the
last Whig to hold the nation's highest office.
The party was ultimately
destroyed by the question of whether to allow the expansion of slavery to the
territories. With deep fissures in the party on this question, the anti-slavery
faction prevented the nomination for a full-term of its own incumbent,
President Fillmore, in the 1852 presidential election; instead, the party
nominated General Winfield Scott. Most Whig party leaders eventually quit
politics (as Abraham Lincoln did temporarily) or changed parties. The northern
voter base mostly joined the new Republican Party. By the 1856 presidential
election, the party was virtually defunct.
In the South, the party
vanished, but Whig ideology as a policy orientation persisted for decades and
played a major role in shaping the modernizing policies of the state
governments during Reconstruction
National
Republicans – The National Republicans
were a political party in the United States. During the administration of John
Quincy Adams (1825–1829), the president's supporters were referred to as Adams
Men or Anti-Jackson. When Andrew Jackson was elected President of the United
States in 1828, this group went into opposition. The use of the term
"National Republican" dates from 1830. Before the elevation of John
Quincy Adams to the presidency in 1825, the Democratic-Republican Party, which
had been the only national American political party for over a decade, began to
fracture, losing its infrastructure and identity. Its caucuses no longer met to
select candidates because now they had separate interests. After the 1824
election, factions developed in support of Adams and in support of Andrew
Jackson. Adams politicians, including most ex-Federalists (such as Daniel
Webster and even Adams himself), would gradually evolve into the National
Republican party, and those politicians that supported Jackson would later help
form the modern Democratic Party. The ad hoc coalition that supported John
Quincy Adams fell apart after his defeat for reelection in 1828. The main
opposition to Jackson, the new president, was the National Republican Party, or
Anti-Jacksonians created and run by Henry Clay. It shared the same
nationalistic outlook as the Adamsites, and wanted to use national resources to
build a strong economy. Its platform was Clay's American System of nationally
financed internal improvements and a protective tariff, which would promote
faster economic development. More important, by binding together the diverse
interests of the different regions, the party intended to promote national
unity and harmony. The National Republicans saw the Union as a corporate,
organic whole. Hence the rank and file idealized Clay for his comprehensive
perspective on the national interest. Conversely, they disdained those they
identified as "party" politicians for pandering to local interests at
the expense of the national interest. The party met in national convention in
late 1831 and nominated Clay for the presidency and John Sergeant for the vice
presidency. The Whig Party emerged in 1833–34 after Clay's defeat as a
coalition of National Republicans, along with Anti-Masons, disaffected
Jacksonians, and people whose last political activity was with the Federalists
a decade before. In the short term, it formed the Whig party with the help of
other smaller parties in a coalition against President Jackson and his reforms.
Oklahoma
– Oklahoma is a state
located in the South Central United States. Oklahoma is the 20th most extensive
and the 28th most populous of the 50 United States. The state's name is derived
from the Choctaw words Okla and humma, meaning "red people". It is
also known informally by its nickname, The Sooner State, in reference to the
non-Native settlers who staked their claims on the choicest pieces of land
prior to the official opening date, and the Indian Appropriations Act of 1889,
which opened the door for white settlement in America's Indian Territory. The
name was settled upon statehood, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were merged
and Indian was dropped from the name. On November 16, 1907, Oklahoma became the
46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans or,
informally "Okies", and its capital and largest city is Oklahoma
City. Evidence exists that native peoples traveled through Oklahoma as early as
the last ice age. Ancestors of the Wichita and Caddo lived in what is now
Oklahoma. The Panhandle culture peoples were precontact residents of the
panhandle region. The westernmost center of the Mississippian culture was Spiro
Mounds, in what is now Spiro, Oklahoma, which flourished between AD 850 and
1450. Spaniard Francisco Vasquez de
Coronado traveled through the state in 1541, but French explorers claimed the
area in the 1700s and it remained under French rule until 1803, when all the
French territory west of the Mississippi River was purchased by the United States
in the Louisiana Purchase.
During the 19th century,
thousands of Native Americans were expelled from their ancestral homelands from
across North America and transported to the area including and surrounding
present-day Oklahoma. The Choctaw was the first of the Five Civilized Tribes to
be removed from the southeastern United States. The phrase "Trail of
Tears" originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation
in 1831, although the term is usually used for the Cherokee removal. A total of
17,000 Cherokees and 2,000 of their black slaves were deported. The area,
already occupied by Osage and Quapaw tribes, was called for the Choctaw Nation
until revised Native American and then later American policy redefined the
boundaries to include other Native Americans. By 1890, more than 30 Native
American nations and tribes had been concentrated on land within Indian Territory
or "Indian Country". Many Native Americans served in the Union and
Confederate military during the American Civil War. The Cherokee Nation had an
internal civil war. Slavery in Indian Territory was not abolished until 1866. In
the period between 1866 and 1899, cattle ranches in Texas strove to meet the
demands for food in eastern cities and railroads in Kansas promised to deliver
in a timely manner. Cattle trails and cattle ranches developed as cowboys
either drove their product north or settled illegally in Indian Territory. In
1881, four of five major cattle trails on the western frontier traveled through
Indian Territory. Increased presence of white settlers in Indian Territory
prompted the United States Government to establish the Dawes Act in 1887, which
divided the lands of individual tribes into allotments for individual families,
encouraging farming and private land ownership among Native Americans but
expropriating land to the federal government. In the process, railroad
companies took nearly half of Indian-held land within the territory for outside
settlers and for purchase.
Equality
of opportunity– Equality of opportunity
is a political ideal that is opposed to caste hierarchy but not to hierarchy
per se. The background assumption is that a society contains a hierarchy of
more and less desirable, superior and inferior positions. Or there may be
several such hierarchies. In a caste society, the assignment of individuals to
places in the social hierarchy is fixed by birth. The child acquires the social
status of his or her parents at least if their union is socially sanctioned.
Social mobility may be possible in a caste society, but the process whereby one
is admitted to a different level of the hierarchy is open only to some
individuals depending on their initial ascriptive social status. In contrast,
when equality of opportunity prevails, the assignment of individuals to places
in the social hierarchy is determined by some form of competitive process, and
all members of society are eligible to compete on equal terms.
Republican
Congressional Caucus/"King Caucus" – The Congressional nominating caucus is the name for
informal meetings in which American congressmen would agree on who to nominate
for the Presidency and Vice Presidency from their political party. This system
was introduced in 1796 after George Washington had announced his retirement
upon the end of his second term, when the Democratic-Republican Party, which
had already settled for Thomas Jefferson as Presidential candidate, decided on
their choice for Vice President. The system ended in 1824 as existing political
parties began to decentralize as a result of the westward expansion of America.
The system had come to be known as "King Caucus", because the power
that these caucuses had to nominate a president was seen as undemocratic. The
failure of the caucus nominee of 1824, William Crawford, and his competitors to
receive an electoral majority resulted in John Quincy Adams finally being
elected president in the House of Representatives. From 1831 onwards, the
Congressional nominating caucus was replaced with national presidential
nominating conventions.
Corrupt
bargain – The term Corrupt Bargain
refers to three historic incidents in American history in which political
agreement was determined by congressional or presidential actions that many
viewed to be corrupt from different standpoints. Two of these involved
resolution of indeterminate or disputed electoral votes from the United States
presidential election process, and the third involved the disputed use of a
presidential pardon. In all three cases, the president so elevated served a
single term, or singular vacancy, and either did not run again, or was not
reelected when he ran. In the 1824 election, no outright majority was attained
and the process required resolution in the House of Representatives, whose
Speaker and candidate in his own right, Henry Clay, gave his support to John
Quincy Adams, and was then selected to be his Secretary of State. In the 1876
election, accusations of corruption stemmed from officials involved in counting
the necessary and hotly contested electoral votes of both sides, in which
Rutherford B. Hayes was elected by a congressional commission. The most recent
incident widely described as a "corrupt bargain" was Gerald Ford's
1974 pardon of Richard Nixon, following the resignation of the disgraced former
president. The critics claim that Ford's pardon was a quid pro quo for Nixon's
resignation, which elevated Ford to the presidency.
Suffrage – Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise
–distinct from other rights to vote– is the right to vote gained through the
democratic process. The right to run for office is sometimes called candidate
eligibility, and the combination of both rights is sometimes called full
suffrage. In many languages, the right to vote is called the active right to
vote and the right to run for office is called the passive right to vote. In
English, these are sometimes called active suffrage and passive suffrage.
Suffrage is often conceived in terms of elections for representatives. However,
suffrage applies equally to initiatives and referenda. Suffrage describes not
only the legal right to vote, but also the practical question of whether a
question will be put to a vote. The utility of suffrage is reduced when
important questions are decided unilaterally by elected or non-elected
representatives.
Property
requirements – The issue of voting
rights in the United States has been contentious throughout United States
history. Eligibility to vote in the United States is relevant at both the
federal and state levels. In the absence of a specific federal law or
constitutional provision, each state is given considerable discretion to
establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own respective
jurisdiction. Originally, the U.S. Constitution did not define who was eligible
to vote, allowing each state to determine who was eligible. In the early
history of U.S., most states allowed only Caucasian males—who either owned
property (i.e., at least 50 acres of land), or, had taxable incomes—to vote.
Women could vote in New Jersey (provided they could meet the property
requirement) and in some local jurisdictions, in other northern states.
Non-white Americans could also vote in these jurisdictions, provided they could
meet the property requirement. Freed slaves could vote in four
states. Initially, unpropertied men and women—white citizens, slaves, and
ex-slaves, alike—were largely prohibited from voting; however, by the time of
the U.S. Civil War, most white men had been allowed to vote regardless of
property ownership. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and even religious tests were
some of the state and local laws used in various parts of the United States to
intentionally deny immigrants (including legal ones and newly naturalized
citizens), non-white citizens, Native Americans, and any other locally
"undesirable" groups from exercising any voting rights that the
federal government had granted them.
Age
of the Common Man – Jacksonian
democracy is the political movement toward greater democracy for the common man
symbolized by American politician Andrew Jackson and his supporters. The
Jacksonian Era lasted roughly from Jackson's 1828 election as president until
the slavery issue became dominant after 1850 and the American Civil War
dramatically reshaped American politics as the Third Party System emerged.
Jackson's policies followed the era of Jeffersonian democracy which dominated
the previous political era. When the Democratic-Republican Party of the
Jeffersonians became factionalized in the 1820s, Jackson's supporters began to
form the modern Democratic Party. They fought the rival Adams and
Anti-Jacksonian factions, which soon emerged as the Whigs. More broadly, the
term refers to the era of the Second Party System (mid-1830s–1854)
characterized by a democratic spirit. It can be contrasted with the
characteristics of Jeffersonian democracy. Jackson's equal political policy
became known as "Jacksonian Democracy", subsequent to ending what he
termed a "monopoly" of government by elites. Jeffersonians opposed
inherited elites but favored educated men while the Jacksonians gave little
weight to education. The Whigs were the inheritors of Jeffersonian Democracy in
terms of promoting schools and colleges. During the Jacksonian era, suffrage
was extended to (nearly) all white male adult citizens.
Innate
racial differences –The
belief that the Indians were an inferior race. As white pressure for removal
intensified, a shift in the attitude toward Indians and race increasingly
occurred. Previously most whites had attributed cultural differences among
whites, blacks, and Indians to the environment. After 1815 the dominant white
culture stressed “innate” racial differences that could never be erased. A
growing number of Americans began to argue that Indians were by nature inferior
savages, obstacles to progress because they were incapable of adopting white
ways.
Log
cabin campaign – The election of 1840 was
fueled by slogans, songs, and alcohol, and that year's race is generally
considered to be the precursor of the modern presidential campaign.
Talk of log cabins and
hard cider and an obscure battle from decades earlier culminated in a landslide
that turned out the incumbent, Martin Van Buren, and brought an aging and
sickly politician, William Henry Harrison, into the White House. Harrison was
the first president to campaign actively for office. He did so with the slogan
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too". Tippecanoe referred to Harrison's
military victory over a group of Shawnee Indians at a river in Indiana called
Tippecanoe in 1811. For their part, Democrats laughed at Harrison for being too
old for the presidency, and referred to him as "Granny", hinting that
he was senile. One Democratic newspaper said: "Give him a barrel of hard cider
and a pension of two thousand dollars a year, and he will sit the remainder of
his days in his log cabin." Whigs took advantage of this quip and declared
that Harrison was "the log cabin and hard cider candidate", a man of
the common people from the rough-and-tumble West. They depicted Harrison's
opponent, President Martin Van Buren, as a wealthy snob who was out of touch
with the people. In fact, it was Harrison who came from a family of wealthy
planters, while Van Buren's father was a tavern keeper. Harrison however moved
to the frontier and for years lived in a log cabin, while Van Buren had been a
well-paid government official. Nonetheless, the election was held during the worst
economic depression in the nation's history, and voters blamed Van Buren,
seeing him as unsympathetic to struggling citizens. Harrison campaigned
vigorously and won.
Segregation
– the physical separation
of the races. African Americans sat in separate sections on public
transportation. They could not go into most hotels and restaurants, and, if
permitted to enter theaters and lecture halls, they squeezed into the corners
and balconies. White churches assigned blacks separate pews and arranged for
them to take communion after white members. Virtually every community excluded
black children from the public schools or forced them to attend overcrowded and
poorly funded separate schools. One English visitor commented that “we see, in
effect, two nations—one white and another black—growing up together … but never
mingling on a principle of equality.”
Theory
of nullification – Nullification,
in United States constitutional history, is a legal theory that a state has the
right to nullify, or invalidate, any federal law which that state has deemed
unconstitutional. The theory of nullification has never been legally upheld by
federal courts. The theory of nullification is based on a view that the States
formed the Union by an agreement (or "compact") among the States, and
that as creators of the federal government, the States have the final authority
to determine the limits of the power of that government. Under this, the compact
theory, the States and not the federal courts are the ultimate interpreters of
the extent of the federal government's power. Under this theory, the States
therefore may reject, or nullify, federal laws that the States believe are
beyond the federal government's constitutional powers. The related idea of
interposition is a theory that a state has the right and the duty to
"interpose" itself when the federal government enacts laws that the
state believes to be unconstitutional. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison set
forth the theories of nullification and interposition in the Kentucky and
Virginia Resolutions in 1798. Courts at the state and federal level, including
the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification. The
courts have decided that under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution,
federal law is superior to state law, and that under Article III of the
Constitution, the federal judiciary has the final power to interpret the
Constitution. Therefore, the power to make final decisions about the
constitutionality of federal laws lies with the federal courts, not the states,
and the states do not have the power to nullify federal laws.
Tariff
of abominations– "Tariff of
1828" was a protective tariff passed by the Congress of the United States
on May 19, 1828, designed to protect industry in the northern United States. It
was labeled the Tariff of Abominations by its southern detractors because of
the effects it had on the antebellum Southern economy. The major goal of the
tariff was to protect industries in the northern United States which were being
driven out of business by low-priced imported goods by taxing them. The South,
however, was harmed directly by having to pay higher prices on goods the region
did not produce, and indirectly because reducing the exportation of British
goods to the U.S. made it difficult for the British to pay for the cotton they
imported from the South. The reaction in the South, particularly in South
Carolina, would lead to the Nullification Crisis that began in late 1832. The
tariff marked the high point of U.S. tariffs.
Nullifying
state – In his theory of
nullification Calhoun addressed the problem of how to protect the rights of a
minority in a political system based on the rule of the majority. The Union, he
argued, was a compact among sovereign states. Thus the people of each state,
acting in special popular conventions, had the right to nullify any federal law
that exceeded the powers granted to Congress under the Constitution. The law
would then become null and void in that state.
In response, Congress
could either repeal the law or propose a constitutional amendment expressly
giving it the power in question. If the amendment was ratified, the nullifying
state could either accept the decision or exercise its ultimate right as a
sovereign state and secede from the Union. When Senator Robert Hayne of South
Carolina outlined Calhoun's theory in the Senate in 1830, Senator Daniel
Webster of Massachusetts replied sharply that the Union was not a compact of
sovereign states.
The people and not the
states, he argued, had created the Constitution. “It is the people's
constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people,
and answerable to the people.” Webster also insisted that the federal
government did not merely act as the agent of the states but had sovereign
powers in those areas in which it had been delegated responsibility. Finally,
Webster endorsed the doctrine of judicial review, which gave the Supreme Court
authority to determine the meaning of the Constitution.
Paper
money aristocracy – The
Democrats tended to view society as a continuing conflict between “the
people”—farmers, planters, and workers—and a set of greedy aristocrats. The
last group was not Europe's landed aristocrats, of course, but a “paper money
aristocracy” of bankers and investors, who manipulated the banking system for
profit.
Independent
Treasury – The Independent Treasury
was a system for the retaining of government funds in the United States
Treasury and its subtreasuries, independently of the national banking and
financial systems. In one form or another, it existed from 1846 to 1921. The
Democrats won the election of 1844 and re-established the Independent Treasury
System in 1846. The Act of August 1846 provided that the public revenues be
retained in the Treasury building and in sub-Treasuries in various cities. The
Treasury was to pay out its own funds and be completely independent of the
banking and financial system of the nation. All payments by and to the
government were to be made in either specie or Treasury Notes. The separation
of the Treasury from the banking system was never completed, however; the
Treasury’s operations continued to influence the money market, as specie
payments to and from the government affected the amount of hard money in
circulation.
Reform
Bill of 1832/Second Reform Bill 1867 – In Britain, in response to growing demonstrations and the cautionary
example of the French monarchy's overthrow in 1830, Parliament approved the
Reform Bill of 1832, which enfranchised a number of property holders and gave
Britain the broadest electorate in Europe. Yet in fact, only about 15 percent
of the adult males in Britain enjoyed the right of suffrage after the bill's
passage. In France the figure was less than 1 percent. The democratic
revolutions of 1848 championed universal male suffrage in France and Prussia.
Yet this ideal soon suffered setbacks. By 1852 the French republic had been
replaced by a monarchy under the emperor Louis Napoleon. And in Prussia, the new
constitution essentially negated universal male suffrage by dividing the
electorate into three classes according to wealth, a formula that enabled 5
percent of the voters to elect one-third of parliament. Belgium, which had the
most liberal constitution in Europe, did not approximate manhood suffrage until
1848. Even the second Reform Act (1867) in Britain enfranchised only about
one-third of the adult males.
Worcester
v. Georgia – As western land fever increased and racial
attitudes sharpened, Jackson prodded Congress to provide funds for Indian
removal. He watched sympathetically as the Georgia legislature overturned the
Cherokee constitution, declared Cherokee laws null and void, and decreed that
tribal members would be tried in state courts. In 1830 Congress finally passed
a removal bill. But the Cherokees brought suit in federal court against
Georgia's actions. In 1832 in the case of Worcester v. Georgia, the Supreme
Court sided with the Cherokees. Indian tribes had full authority over their
lands, wrote Chief Justice John Marshall in the opinion. Thus Georgia had no
right to extend its laws over Cherokee territory.
Minstrel shows/"black face" – The racist attitudes of
the day were very much reflected in popular culture, nowhere more than in
minstrel shows, the most popular form of entertainment in Jacksonian America.
Originating in the 1830s and 1840s, minstrel shows featured white actors
performing in blackface. Although popular throughout the country, minstrelsy's
primary audience was in northern cities. Its basic message was that African
Americans could not cope with freedom and therefore did not belong in the
North. Enslaved African Americans were portrayed as happy and contented,
whereas free black Americans were caricatured either as strutting dandies or as
helpless ignoramuses.
Mutual
aid societies– A benefit society or mutual
aid society is an organizational or voluntary association formed to provide
mutual aid, benefit, or insurance for relief from sundry difficulties. Such
organizations may be formally organized with charters and established customs,
or may arise ad hoc to meet unique needs of a particular time and place. Benefit
societies can be organized around a shared ethnic background, religion,
occupation, geographical region or other basis. Benefits may include money or
assistance for sickness, retirement, education, birth of a baby, funeral and
medical expenses, unemployment. Often benefit societies provide a social or
educational framework for members and their families to support each other and
contribute to the wider community.
American
Colonization Society – The
American Colonization Society (ACS; in full, "The Society for the
Colonization of Free People of Color of America"), established in 1817 by
Robert Finley of New Jersey, was the primary vehicle to support the return of
free African Americans to what was considered greater freedom in Africa. It
helped to found the colony of Liberia in 1821–22 as a place for freedmen. Among
its supporters were Charles Fenton Mercer, Henry Clay, John Randolph, and
Richard Bland Lee.
Force
Bill – The United States Force
Bill, formally titled "An Act further to provide for the collection of
duties on imports", 4 Stat. 632 (1833), refers to legislation enacted by
the 22nd U.S. Congress on March 2, 1833 during the Nullification Crisis. Passed
by Congress at the urging of President Andrew Jackson, the Force Bill consisted
of eight sections expanding presidential power and was designed to compel the
state of South Carolina's compliance with a series of federal tariffs, opposed
by John C. Calhoun and other leading South Carolinians. Among other things, the
legislation stipulated that the president could, if he deemed it necessary,
deploy the U.S. Army to force South Carolina to comply with the law.
Review Questions
1. The chapter introduction tells the story of
politicians Powhatan Ellis and Franklin Plummer to make the point that:
A) People had strange names in the 1800s.
B) These two frontiersmen identified with the
common folk and typified the democratic-minded politician in the Age of
Jackson.
C)
Appealing to common folk was an effective campaign technique in an age that
prized equality and opportunity.
D) Andrew Jackson was a mere figurehead for his
political organizers who created the boisterous and corrupt second party
system.
2. Each of the following was a symbol of the
emphasis on social equality in American society EXCEPT:
A) The availability of only one class of seats in
railroad cars and stagecoaches.
B) The freedom to strike up a conversation with anyone,
including strangers.
C) The prevalence of the custom of chewing tobacco and
spitting.
D)
The presence of women in the same dining facilities as men.
3. The changes in the clothing industry:
A)
Made fashion primarily a female concern.
B) Allowed women to purchase ready-made clothing at
reduced costs.
C) Increased the distinctions between the classes.
D) Left little distinction between work and leisure
clothing.
4. in the presidential election of 1824:
A) John Quincy Adams won re-election to a second term.
B) Henry Clay and the Whigs defeated the Democrats.
C) The House of Representatives chose as president the
candidate who finished second in both the popular and electoral votes.
D)
Calhoun received the vice-presidency in exchange for backing Adams.
5. Important characteristics of politics in the Age
of Jackson included all of the following EXCEPT:
A) Mass entertainment with hoopla overshadowing issues.
B) Expanded political democracy and increased
participation in politics.
C) The acceptance of a party system as legitimate.
D) Increased
government efficiency through a competent civil service.
6. Initially, the most important factor unifying
the Whig party was:
A) Opposition
to Jackson.
B) Support for states' rights.
C) Opposition to high tariffs.
D) Support for recharter of the bank.
7. The 1828 presidential election was the beginning
of the modern presidential election in all of the following ways EXCEPT:
A) Two disciplined national parties actively campaigned
for votes.
B) The
South determined the outcome of the election.
C) The campaign emphasized personalities over issues.
D) The parties used mass electioneering techniques such
as rallies and conventions.
8. Through military fighting and treaty
negotiation, Andrew Jackson was responsible for gaining territory for the
United States in each of the following states EXCEPT:
A) Tennessee.
B) Florida.
C) North Carolina.
D) Missouri.
9. Indications of Cherokee involvement in the
national web of market relationships included:
A) A new egalitarianism in Cherokee politics.
B) Cherokee involvement in the fur trade.
C) The
purchase of slaves and thousands of acres of cotton land by some of the tribe's
leaders.
D) all of the above.
10. Free blacks:
A) Could vote in most Northern states.
B) Could testify or serve on juries in most northern
states.
C) Were allowed to patronize most theaters, hotels, and
restaurants in the North.
D) Were
willing to serve as strikebreakers in many cases.
11. What statement best describes the attitude of
Jacksonian Democrats toward slavery?
A) They strongly defended slavery as a positive
good for all sections of the country.
B) They
accepted the institution of slavery in the South and opposed rights for free
blacks.
C) They quietly encouraged the minority among their
ranks who actively pressed for the abolition of slavery.
D) They took steps at the state level to upgrade
the condition of blacks without trying to abolish the institution.
12. John C. Calhoun's theory of nullification addressed
the problem of how to protect the rights of a minority in an increasingly
democratic political system by arguing that:
A) The implied powers of the Constitution did not
include taxation by tariff.
B) Since
the United States was a combination of sovereign states, special popular
conventions possessed the authority to annul federal laws.
C) Since the federal union was formed by the people
and not the states, the people could annul federal laws in special elections.
D) States' rights listed in the Constitution
required states to check and balance the power of the president.
13. Which of the following concerning the Bank of
the United States is true?
A) It was the key issue in the 1824 Presidential
campaign (among Jackson, Clay, Adams, and Crawford) that was decided by the
House of Representatives.
B) In
the 1820s and 1830s it was mismanaged, unresponsive to the nation's needs, and
unsuccessful in stabilizing the currency.
C) Andrew Jackson hated it and vetoed a bill to
recharter it because he thought it undemocratic and corrupt.
D) The Supreme Court ruled that a national bank was
unconstitutional.
14. Shortly after he took office, Martin Van Buren
ran into trouble because of:
A) A
business panic that became a lingering depression.
B) A diplomatic crisis with Great Britain that the Whigs
exploited for partisan purposes.
C) The scandalous conduct and deadly consequences of the
Trail of Tears.
D) Antislavery protests.
15. In the Jacksonian party system:
A) The
Whigs supported an active government, the Democrats a limited government.
B) The Democrats supported an active government, the
Whigs a limited government.
C) Neither party believed moral questions should be
injected into politics.
D) Both parties promoted the market and
commercialization.
Practice
Test
1. The charge of a "corrupt
bargain" was raised when:
A.
Clay supported Adams for the presidency
and was appointed secretary of state.
B.
Jackson
promised to reward his supporters if he won.
C.
Adams
won with the support of southern planters.
D.
the
Republican caucus threw its support to Adams.
E.
Adams
privately promised southern Congressmen he would not opposed an all-slave
westward expansion.
2. The Cherokee were supported in their
unsuccessful battle against removal by:
A.
President
Jackson.
B.
the Supreme Court.
C.
Congress.
D.
the
state of Georgia.
E.
the
state of North Carolina.
3. The South Carolina Exposition and
Protest condemned as unconstitutional the:
A.
recharter
of the national bank.
B.
Maysville
Road Bill.
C.
Indian
Removal Act.
D.
"tariff of abominations."
E.
the
repeal of the Force Act.
4. Determined to reduce the Bank's power
even before its charter expired, Jackson:
A.
fired
most of its officials, including Biddle.
B.
removed government deposits from the
Bank.
C.
removed
government deposits from state banks.
D.
exposed
the high officials who had been borrowing from the Bank.
E.
directed
Biddle to call in all loans.
5. In its rulings concerning the Indian
tribes, the Marshall Court held that:
A.
the national government, not the
states, had authority.
B.
Indians
were citizens like everyone else.
C.
Indians
had the same status as slaves.
D.
tribal
lands belong to the states.
E.
Indians
had no rights in a court of law.
6. The Whig Party:
A.
favored
expanding the power of the federal government.
B.
encouraged
industrial and commercial development.
C.
advocated
knitting the country together into a consolidated economic system.
D.
both
favored expanding the power of the federal government and encouraged industrial
and commercial development.
E.
All these answers are correct.
7. In 1836, President Andrew Jackson's
"specie circular":
A.
resulted in a severe financial panic.
B.
was
defeated by Congress.
C.
was
of considerable political benefit to Martin Van Buren.
D.
required
foreigners doing business in the United States to pay their debts in hard
currency.
E.
caused
a significant rise in prices, especially the price of land.
8. The "force bill" of 1833:
A.
authorized the president to use force
to see that acts of Congress were obeyed.
B.
forced
Jackson to stand up to Calhoun.
C.
forced
the president to consult Congress if he planned to use troops against South
Carolina.
D.
made
it impossible for other southern states to nullify laws.
E.
forced
Calhoun to resign from the Senate.
9. President Martin Van Buren's
"subtreasury" system:
A.
was a financial system to replace the
Bank of the United States.
B.
created
a new national bank.
C.
never
became law.
D.
quickly
failed.
E.
did
not pass until his successor's administration.
10. In 1840, William Henry Harrison:
A.
was,
at the time, the youngest man to win the presidency.
B.
was
a simple frontiersman with little money or resources to his name.
C.
died
before he took office.
D.
was
a Republican.
E.
was part of a wealthy, large
land-owning, frontier elite.
11. Jackson wanted to weaken the
functions of the federal government and give the states more power.
A.
True
B.
False
12. Henry Clay's "American
System" included a national bank, a protective tariff, and federally
funded internal improvements.
A.
True
B.
False
13. If Calhoun and his allies learned
nothing else from the nullification crisis, they learned that no state could
defy the federal government alone.
A.
True
B.
False
14. In Worcester v. Georgia, the
Marshall Court upheld the right of a state legislature to regulate Indian
affairs.
A.
True
B.
False
15. The "tariff of
abominations" was most strenuously opposed by the people of New England.
A.
True
B.
False
16. Americans in the age of Jacksonian
democracy celebrated equality, but they did not mean equality of wealth or condition;
rather, they meant equality of ________.
opportunity
17. The outcome of the 1824 election,
determined by the House of Representatives, angered Jackson's supporters when
________ was named secretary of state.
Henry Clay
18. In some ways the social makeup of
the two parties was similar, but attitude toward the ________, rather than
economic position, was more important in determining party affiliation.
market
19. The Jacksonian era has been called
the "Age of the ________," when ordinary folk were celebrated and
courted by politicians.
Common Man
20. The system whereby victorious
candidates for political office replace officeholders with their own supporters
is called the ________ system.
spoils
21. In the case of Worcester v. Georgia,
the Supreme Court ruled that ________ had full authority over Indian land.
Indians
22. In protest against the federal
tariff, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina developed a ________ theory, which
supported state sovereignty and ultimately laid the groundwork for southern
secession.
nullification
23. ________, who was despised by Andrew
Jackson, was an effective president of the national bank.
Nicholas Biddle
24. The ________ party was successful in
the 1840 presidential election.
Whig
25. John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay
were considered by many to have negotiated what is known as the "________
bargain" of 1824.
Corrupt
26. Jackson's supporters created the
________ as a forum for selecting candidates for president.
National convention
27. John C. Calhoun championed a states'
rights theory called ________.
Nullification
28. John C. Calhoun argued that the
federal government was a creation of the ________.
States
29. The forced Cherokee migration on
what was called the Trail of Tears ended in the territory of ________.
Oklahoma
30. In the election of 1832, Andrew
Jackson was opposed by ________.
Henry Clay
31. President Jackson's distrust of
paper currency became obvious when in 1836 he issued an executive order called
the "________."
Specie circular
Chapter Test
1. The Black
Hawk War:
A.
was
notable for the cruel treatment of white settlers by Indians.
B.
saw
the Sauk and Foxes temporarily regain control of part of western Illinois.
C.
was
over before Jackson entered the White House.
D.
occurred because Black Hawk and his
followers refused to recognize a treaty by which they ceded their lands to the
U.S.
E.
cleared
the way for the settlement of Chicago.
2. The so-called
"corrupt bargain" of 1824 involved:
A.
the
sale of public land to supporters of the Monroe administration.
B.
political
payoffs and bribery involving the Treasury Department.
C.
illegal
contracts between the State Department and private corporations.
D.
federal
funds for internal improvements to certain states in exchange for electoral
votes.
E.
a political deal to determine the
outcome of the presidential election.
3. When the Bank
of the United States died in 1836, the country was left with a fragmented and
chronically unstable banking system.
A.
True
B.
False
4. In Worcester
v. Georgia (1832), the Marshall Court ruled that:
A.
individual
states could try tribal members in a state court
B.
American
Indian tribes had to submit to individual state laws.
C.
as
President, Jackson could call for the tribes removal from their lands
D.
Georgia had no right to extend its laws
over Cherokee territory.
E.
Georgia
had the right to extend its laws over Cherokee territory.
5. To many in
1828, the election of Andrew Jackson as president was a victory for the
"common man."
A.
True
B.
False
6. The
"spoils system" refers to:
A.
making
illegal payoffs to political supporters.
B.
giving
away land taken from Indians to white settlers.
C.
the
destruction of land by overly aggressive settlement.
D.
giving out jobs as political rewards.
E.
parceling
out federal land to the highest bidder.
7. In the
Election of 1824, Jackson claimed he had won the election, but according to the
Constitution he lost the election because:
A.
he
did not receive the majority of the popular votes
B.
he did not receive the majority of the
electoral college votes
C.
he
did not receive the majority of popular and electoral college votes
D.
many
of the people who voted for him cast illegal ballots
8. Adams's
nationalistic program, which was a lot like Clay's American System, was not
funded because:
A.
the
nation could not afford it.
B.
business
opposed it.
C.
western
interests opposed it.
D.
Jackson's supporters in Congress voted
against it.
E.
Daniel
Webster opposed it and led a filibuster.
9. During the
age of Jackson, politics became open to virtually all the nation's white male
citizens.
A.
True
B.
False
10. The Cherokee
were supported in their unsuccessful battle against removal by:
A.
President
Jackson.
B.
the Supreme Court.
C.
Congress.
D.
the
state of Georgia.
E.
the
state of North Carolina.
11. During the
first decades of the nineteenth century the American view of Indians as
"noble savages" changed to a view of them simply as
"savages."
A.
True
B.
False
12. In his
victory in 1828, Jackson drew his greatest support from the:
A.
South and the West.
B.
New
England region and the Southeast.
C.
Middle
Atlantic states and the Old Northwest.
D.
South
and the Middle Atlantic states.
E.
New
England and the Middle Atlantic.
13. The Seminole:
A.
were never completely removed from
their lands in Florida.
B.
were
removed after a long military struggle with the U.S. Army.
C.
lost
1/3 of their tribe on the "Trail of Tears."
D.
managed
to kill 100 American soldiers before they surrendered.
E.
raided
southern Georgia and Alabama until the Civil War.
14. The advance
of the southern frontier meant the spread not just of cotton but also of
slavery.
A.
True
B.
False
15. In 1832,
supporters of President Jackson held a national convention in order to:
A.
force
the opposition to make their case in public.
B.
bring
more public attention to their candidate.
C.
have
greater control of the nominating process.
D.
shore
up Jackson's shaky support among voters in the Northeast.
E.
make the nominating process more democratic.
