Jacksonian Democracy (1820-1840)

• Characteristics of the Age of Jackson
  • Introduction- The New West
    • Jackson was born in the Waxhaw mountains to a very poor house and orphaned at a very young age.
    • The Hermitage was the mansion in Tennessee where Jackson lived when he got a little bit of money. He openly supported slavery and thought it was very important for the country.
    • Andrew Jackson's haters called him King Andrew I. He vetoed 12 bills, which was more vetoes than all the presidents before him combined. He set a precedent for vetoing bills often just because he didn't like them, not because they were unconstitutional.
    • He was the first president to have an assignation attempt on his life. Richard Lawrence was the assassinator; however, both of his pistols misfired and was almost beaten to death by Jackson with his walking stick.
  • The spoils system: It was brought back under Jackson's presidency. He called it "rotation of office."
  • He surrounded himself with advisors called the Kitchen Cabinet. The most famous of the kitchen cabinet were: Amos Kendal (campaign manager)l, Martin van Buren (secretary of state, VP, and president), and Roger B. Taney (Secretary of Treasury because of his 2nd BUS and pet bank plan, Chief Justice during the Scott vs Sanford, or the Dead Scott case).
  • Issues under Jackson
    • Indian Removal
      • slow and small (describing how they were kicked out)
      • Reasons for an increase in problems with Indians in the 1820s and 1830s:
        • the white people wanted the indians' land because they didn't think that they were using it correctly
        • the southern states did not want national government influence in their states
        • Slave Uprisings had some correlation with the Indians, who harbored slaves and intermingled with them.
          • Slave revolt against France in Haiti led by Toussaint L'Overture scared the southerners into tying to pass the fugitive slave law.
          • Unsuccessful uprising in Richmond that was ratted out by fellow slaves.
          • Nat Turner led a disastrous revolt in South side Virginia, since he thought he was visited by god. About 100 whites were killed with farm implements. 100 slaves/free blacks were also killed.
      • The 5 Civilized Tribes
        • The Creek attempted to embrace their fate. Lived in the Appalachain Mountains in Alabama and Georgia, and got moved to Oklahoma.
        • Seminole Tribe resisted valiantly because they had this great leader Osceola. He was captured by Americans under a white flag and eventually died in prison. Without their leader the resistance died; however, there are still Seminoles living in Florida today and have never signed a peace treaty.
        • The Cherokee were definitely the most "civilized" of all the tribes. They had slaves, farmed cotton, a constitution, law code (written by Sequoyah), and a leader with an American name.
        • Choctaw
      • Worcester vs Georgia 1832: Worcester claims in court that their treaty rights were violated by Georgians. The treaty was called the Tellico Treaty made in 1798 by Adams. Marshall was caught between giving the state government power, and telling Andrew Jackson to stop Georgia from kicking off the Indians because Jackson hates the Indians.
        • Marshall said that it was moot because the Indians weren't even citizens; however, he stated that only national government could deal with Indian reservation stuff.
      • The Indians now have "domestic dependence," which meant that they were a country inside of a state, that only the national government could deal with. "John Marshall had made his decision, now let him enforce it." -Andrew Jackson. He was basically telling the Supreme Court to shove it, because it was the president who was supposed to enforce the laws. The Indian migration came to be called the Trail of Tears.
    • Maysville Road Veto
      • the road would connect Lexington and Maysville Kentucky aka central Kentucky to the Ohio River. Jackson thought that
      • 1) it was the states' rights to build internal improvements and
      • 2) he hated Henry Clay. The NE was happy with the veto because they wanted less power in influence out in the West, and because the roads would drain away possible factory labor.
    • Jackson vs Calhoun
      • Peggy O' Neal Eaton Affair 1828-1831:
        • Peggy was a very beautiful, flirtatious, witty women who was used to sell cigars. She married a seaman at 17, and had multiple affairs with different men while her husband was at sea. One of the men was John Eaton, a senator from Tennessee.
        • Peggy's first husband committed suicide at sea, and so Peggy married John Eaton, and soon after John Eaton gets promoted to Secretary of War. Mrs. Calhoun started snubbing the Eatons, and caused a rift within Jackson's presidency.
        • Jackson fired lots of his cabinet, and Calhoun chose to support his wife instead of Jackson. This was the beginning of the end of Calhoun's national political career.
      • Jackson's Idiotic Raid
        • Calhoun wrote a letter about Jackson's raids and hanging of the two British soldiers in Northern Florida when he was Secretary of War in 1818?. The newspapers published it in 1839? and said that Calhoun had called Jackson an idiot, which he didn't really do.
      • Webster Hayne Debate 1829 and 1830
        • Thomas Hart Benton was from Missouri, which was the Western most state in the US at this point. He tried to pass the preemption and graduation laws, which made it easier to own the land that you were squatting on it.
        • Daniel Webster is from the North, so he starts to find excuses that the laws shouldn't be passed. The North doesn't like Western influence or the west stealing their workers.
        • Robert Y. Hayne from the South chooses to support the West because they are still salty about the Northern states. He starts attacking the North and brings up the Hartford Convention, as well as the Blue Light Federalists.
        • Daniel Webster stands up and defends the North saying
          • Yeah we traded with the enemy during the War of 1812, but we also sent more soldiers.
          • If nullification is true, then the only thing holding the country together is a "rope of sand."
          • The US is not a collection of states, but an indissoluble sovereign nation. The Constitution begins with "We the people."
          • Ended his speech with, "Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable."
        • Jackson eventually sides with Webster.
      • The final issue that split Calhoun and Jackson was the Tariff of Abominations in 1828. Jackson made a law that would slowly back off and reduce the tariff to 35% in 1832 to satisfy the Southerners, but the southerners were still unhappy, and this is when Calhoun splits.
        • After Calhoun resigns, he goes and gathers resistance to the tariff in the South. The people down here in South Carolina who were against the tariff and for state rights were called nullies. Their symbol was the palmetto tree.
        • Jackson sent troops to South Carolina and calls it the force act. Henry Clay the "Great Compromiser" proposed a lower tariff over a period of 10 years.
    • The Bank War 1832-1836
      • Nicholas Biddle, nicknamed, Czar Nicholas I was the president of the Second Bank of the United States. Larry says he was smart financially, but very arrogant and stupid.
      • The rechartering of the bank passed the House and Senate, but Jackson vetoed it.
      • Jackson said he vetoed because
        • the bank was unconstitutional, which was not accurate. Mcculloch vs Maryland proved Jackson wrong.
        • The West was an enemy of the bank since the Panic of 1819
        • Jackson called the bank anti-american. This was because of the British stockholders in the 2nd BUS.
        • He also said the bank was plutocratic (ruled by the rich). This was actually pretty true.
        • Finally, Jackson said the bank was corrupt.
      • In order to kill the bank, Jackson takes all of the money from the Second BUS and disperses it across the nation to "pet banks" and friends and supporters. Roger B Taney was part of his kitchen cabinet and was his Secretary of Treasury at this time (his third one), and eventually Taney would become Head Supreme Court Justice.
  • Election of 1832
    • Jackson vs Clay. The vote was not close 219 to 49 in favor of Jackson.
• Election of 1836
  • Jackson is going to pull a "Thomas Jefferson," and hand pick a successor: Martin Van Buren.
  • The Democrats have the popularity and confidence to call themselves just plain Democrats.
  • Martin van Buren
    • nicknamed the Little Magician because he was an excellent politician
    • from Kinderhook, New York
    • started the Albany Regency, which was the first state wide political machine.
      • Political Machines became a way of life, in the south as well as the north. The machines were more popular in the north.
      • Robert Owen came from GBR and started New Harmony Utopian Society. He created a political party called the Working Man's Society that wanted to get the workday reduced down to 10 hours.
    • stared the Democrat tradition of enveloping smaller single party issues into the party.
  • The Whig party was the "party against the King." The king here was Andrew Jackson. Their strategy was to run lots of favorite sons in order to dilute the Electoral College so that Jackson would not get the majority.
    • William Harrison, the governor from Indiana (Ohio) 73
    • Hough White (Tennessee) 26
    • Daniel Webster (Mass) 14
    • Mangum, graduate of UNC Chapel Hill and considered the Founder of the Whig party (NC) 11
• Events under MVB
  • Troubles with Britain/ British Canada: later
  • Rise of Abolitionism:
    • The difference between anti-slavery and abolitionist is that abolitionists
      • wanted to outlaw slavery now
      • didn't want to give any slave owners compensation for the slaves
      • believed it was morally wrong for someone to own someone else
  • The Panic of 1837:
    • 1: is over speculation in the West, on roads, canals, cotton, railroads, and slaves. This means that people were buying stuff and trying to turn around and sell it. Prices were inflated which causes people to get loans from wildcat banks without co lateral.
    • 2: Over producing agricultural stuff like cotton. India started to grow cotton, which made American cotton less valuable.
    • 3: Britain stopped investing in American businesses corn
    • Trigger: Thomas Hart Benton's (passed by Andrew Jackson) executive order called the "specie circular" stated that only hard money (specie) could be used to purchase government land. The effects took about 6 months to hit, thus the Panic. Without the Second BUS there was nothing to control the pet banks and they went crazy.
    • This depression became Euro-American, and prices plummeted.
    • All banks suspended specie payments. The banks stopped exchanging paper money for gold. 40% of the banks went bankrupt, which was called a "Run on the Banks." There was 20% unemployment. The North was hit much worse than the South.
• Election of 1840
  • The Divorce Bill 1837: created an independent sub treasury, this meant he created a kind of banking system that was not really a bank. Basically he is admitting that he shouldn't have killed the bank.
    • The divorce bill was great- except for MVB took money out of circulation instead of putting money in. This made a bad situation worse.
  • Part of where MVB got his anti-banking ideas from the "Loco Foco's," which meant crazy lights. They were matches, which were very valuable at this time. There was a democratic anti-bank group who would strike a match, light a candle, and count their money since they didn't trust the bank.
  • MVB ran but lost, but lost to Tippecanoe and Tyler too!
  • The Democrats accidentally started to call Harrison uneducated and poor, which turned into a successful campaign. Tyler was a Democrat in order to get more votes for Harrison for president.
  • The final vote was 234-60
  • Tyler was called "his accidence-y" since he wasn't even really supposed to be president after Harrison died of pneumonia

Jacksonian Democracy (1820-1840)

• Introduction
  • Jacksonian Democracy was not social or economic democracy, but political democracy.
  • Was political democracy because in Jackson's time period the money and land requirements for voting were removed.
    • The land requirements to vote were taken off after the Panic of 1819 because over speculation caused a lot of people to loose their land, and therefore the right to vote. The government thought this wasn't fair, and so it removed the land restrictions. Also, the restrictions were removed because of the low wages of manufacturing (industrialization). Factory workers were making money, but didn't own lots of land.
• Democratic Reforms
  • The US was in a very ripe position for political reform because-
    • The US had much less of a distinct class divisions, which was based on money, than in Europe .
    • There wasn't as much mass poverty because ->
    • we had LAND. (another reference to Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis).
  • Examples of the Jacksonian Democracy
    • Universal Manhood Suffrage: no land restrictions on voting. This was a huge leap! The first state to grant universal suffrage was Vermont, and the last two states were North Carolina and Virginia.
    • Political Involvement: once people began to make a little bit of money, they would participate in government in order to protect their wealth and interests. Basically people would vote to protect their money.
    • Free black males would loose their right to vote during the Jacksonian Democracy, which is very sad and ironic.
    • Politiking
      • Candidates would give "stump speeches" in order to gain popularity while running for office, shake hands with people (aka pressing the flesh), kiss babies, make campaign buttons, slogans (Tippee canoe and Tyler too, referring to William Henry Harrison and Tyler Perry), nicknames (Jackson was called Old Hickory beccause he was so tough).
    • The anti-masons (basically anti-Jacksons, since Jackson was a mason) were a group who opposed and eventually did away with the caucus system, and were the first to use a National Convention to elect their party candidate. Caucusing was when some very rich and powerful politicians would choose the candidates who would run for president back in those days. The National Conventions today are where the party members choose the presidential candidates.
    • Electors: in those days, the general people did not get to vote for their electors, only higher up and more powerful people would vote for the electors. Electors also didn't always vote the same way as their constituents.
    • Spoils or the Patronage System: if someone wins the presidency, they would give all their friends and helpers jobs.
• Election of 1824: Democratic Republican party was the only party in this election. There were lots and lots of candidates since it was all one party.
  • Running the "Favorite Son," which means people would elect the sons of popular political figures.
  • Andrew Jackson, senator from Tennessee, got 99 electoral votes, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams from Massachusetts, got 84 electoral votes, William Henry Crawford, who was secretary of Treasury from Georgia, got 41 electoral votes, and finally Henry Clay, speaker of the house from Kentucky, got 37 electoral votes.
  • The top 3 candidates went to the House of Representatives to decide the presidency! Clay would now decide the presidency since he was speaker of the House. Clay liked Crawford the best, but he was about to die. Clay supports John Quincy Adams so that he can be secretary of state (which usually leads to presidency) and get his American System approved.
  • Andrew Jackson gets really really angry and calls this the corrupt deal
• Adams Administration (1825-1829)
  • Adams was "out of touch"
    • no baby kissing
    • was not popular with the people
    • did not use the spoils system
    • Adams was a hardcore nationalist.
    • He wanted to use tax dollars to build things like internal improvements, a national university, and an observatory. People (especially the poor people) thought this was a waste of money.
    • Adams also tried to slow westward expansion in order to avoid another over-speculation. It was also rumored that he didn't want people to move out west because he wanted labor for the factories.
  • The Tariff of 1828 or the Tariff of Abominations: Put a duty on wool, which made the mid atlantic states happy, but angered the NE states. Also put a duty on manufactured goods, which made the NE states happy, but ticked off the mid atlantic and the southern states. The tariff was 45%, and Adams signed the bill.
    • This made the south furious, since all the other regions benefitted from the tariff except for them. The old south was dying because the soil was out of the nutrients, and the tariff was like a scapegoat for all the pent up anger about the exhausted soil.
    • Why the South was against almost any tariffs at all:
      • the south didn't need a tariff because they already sold the cheapest cotton in the world
      • the tariff caused manufactured goods to be more expensive for everyone
      • retaliation from Britain: Britain would now search for other places to buy cotton, for example India)
      • finally, the less money the British made, the less money they could spend in Americans markets
  • Calhoun's vice presidency
    • Calhoun wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest anonymously; however, everyone already knew it was him. The essay was written based on The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison: the states have a right to oppose any laws they think unconstitutional. The difference between the Resolutions and the Exposition is that the Exposition says that if 3/4 of the states are against the tariff, they would essentially amend the tariff. Calhoun defends his idea of concurrent majority.
    • Calhoun is considered a nationalist because he knows that if something is not done about the anger in the south, they will secede. Eventually they did secede, although much later, and Jackson responded with war ships.
• Triumph of the Jacksonian
  • Dirty Election of 1828
    • Jackson: his followers portrayed him as a common man, war-hero who would clean up the corrupt government of Adams. Called himself a Democratic Republican. Both sides were wary of calling itself a democrat because it still brought up images of the Mobocracy. Amos Kendall was from Kentucky, and was an editor of a paper called the Kentucky Argus. Jackson was the first person to run a moderate campaign and get a national newspaper. Also used posters, slogans, and a "log cabin, hard cider campaign."
      • Things against Jackson:
        • the coffin handbill about all the people he had murdered, the donkey cartoons, and his "adulteress" wife Rachel Donaldson Robards.
    • John Quincy Adams:
      • Things against JQA: apparently he had gaming tables and gambling problem, gave an American girl to a Russian czar as a present (accused of being a pimp), was a parasite, which meant he wasted tax dollars on silly things, made a corrupt bargain with Henry Clay and appointed him to secretary of state, and created Tariff of Abominations
    • Result: Jackson wins 178-83 electoral votes, and invites all the common men to his inauguration. There's a crazy story about how Jackson almost got crushed to death at his inauguration, which he invited everyone to, by all his fans. JQA decides to run for House of Representatives after he was not elected to the Presidency. He held a public office for 18 years after this because he was so absolutely and totally against slavery. The House passed a technically unconstitutional bill that they passed called the Gag Rule to shut JQA up. This was very unconstitutional and also led to the Civil War.
• Random Facts
  • Martin Van Buren founded the first ever state political machine called the Albany Regency.
  • Jackson was one of the founders of the New Democratic party. Other founders include: John Calhoun, Martian van Buren, and Thomas Hart Benton.
  • Taught himself law and passed the bar exam. Basically, he wasn't stupid, but he was very uncouth. He was the fist president to embody the rags to riches idea.
  • Jackson absolutely hated the British because of a terrible injury and scar he got at the age of 12 or 13.