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.