Chapter 11 – The Rise of Democracy
(1824 – 1840)
Intro: People campaigning for political offices during this time tried to portray themselves as the champion of the people battling against the aristocracy in order to receive votes. During this time, politics were becoming more democratic and changing from that of the early republic. Because of the growth of commerce and new markets, Americans were faced with many new opportunities to accumulate wealth and gain status and respect. Even though the new markets were producing a more stratified (unequal) society, the nation’s politics were becoming more democratic. This new democracy created a new class of politicians and involved many more voters than ever before. However, the relationship between the new equalities of politics and the new opportunities of the market was an uneasy one.
I. Equality and Opportunity
Intro: European visitors to America were struck by the “democratic spirit” that the Americans had embraced. They saw the equality of society in America and were shocked by it. However, the Americans were self-consciously proud of such democratic behavior, which they viewed as a valued heritage of the Revolution.
A. The Tension between Equality and Opportunity
There was tension between the American values of opportunity and quality. Obviously, widespread opportunity would produce inequality of wealth. In the age of the frontier region, a rough equality of wealth and status had prevailed with the lack of access to the markets. By the 1820’s and 1830’s however, as opportunities expanded the distribution of wealth became unequal. By equality, Americans did not mean equality of wealth or property. They meant the equality of opportunity. The government was seen by the American people as being a safeguard of opportunity.
II. The New Political Culture of Democracy
Intro: In 1824, James Monroe was coming to the end of his second term as president. He was not a part of the new politics, and many new leaders in the Republican Party looked to succeed him. The Republicans nominated William Crawford, but the three other Republican candidates already running refused to drop out of the race. These people were John Quincy Adams, John Calhoun, and Henry Clay. No one was able to predict the rise of Andrew Jackson however. He had limited political experience, so people originally took him as a joke. The people of America first made Jackson a serious candidate.
A. The Election of 1824
Jackson was in the lead for the election. However, Henry Clay, even though he had already been eliminated, held enough influence as Speaker of the House to name the winner. After a shady deal with Adams, he rallied the votes in the House needed to win Adams the presidency. After his victory, Adams announced Clay as his new secretary of state, which was the usual stepping stone to the presidency. Jackson charged the duo with a “corrupt bargain” and started campaigning for the 1828 election. After this event, the old party system was shattered. 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 supporters called themselves Democrats. By 1830, the National Republicans had evolved into the Whigs. (Many Anti-Masons were drawn into the Whig party). The Democrats came together under the leadership of Andrew Jackson. Once established, this second American party system dominated the nation’s politics until the 1850’s.
B. Social Sources of the New Politics
The rise of the new political culture was rooted in these social conditions. The American people believed that the government had a responsibility to relieve distress and promote prosperity and therefore saw politics as relevant to their daily lives. Elections became the means through which the majority expressed its policy preferences by voting for candidates pledged to specific programs. The representatives were now seen as embodiment of the will of the people. After this, most states eliminated property requirements for voting and enacted white male suffrage. Presidential elections became more democratic, as voters now were able to choose presidential electors. The change in America impacted Europe as well. Parliament in Britain approved the Reform Bill of 1832, which gave Britain the broadest electorate in Europe, even though only 15% of males could vote. In France and in Prussia, the democratic revolutions of 1848 championed universal male suffrage, but were unsuccessful. Voter turnout in America increased dramatically, and 78 percent of eligible voters were voting in the 1840’s.
C. The Acceptance of Parties
New types of politicians arose. Their lives were devoted to party service and depended for their living on public office. The number of governmental jobs increased. Political leaders were more likely to come from the middle ranks of society, especially outside of the South. To be successful during this time, a politician had to mingle with the masses and voice their feelings. This new strategy put the wealthy at a disadvantage. Martin Van Buren was a prime example of this new politician. He lacked great oratorical skills but he was a master organizer and tactician. He encouraged political parties and stressed that they would check abuses and keep the masses informed.
D. The Politics of the Common Man
Andrew Jackson was extremely successful at using the new political culture to become elected. During this time, politics became mass entertainment, in which campaign hoopla often overshadowed the issues. Politicians often talked about principles; however, they were sometimes intent on gaining and holding power. The Jacksonian Era has been called the Age of the Common Man. Everything was not perfect as women and slaves were still not allowed to vote and parties sometimes did not even address basic problems in society. Popular political parties provided an essential mechanism for peacefully resolving differences among competing interest groups, regions, and social classes.
III. Jackson’s Rise to Power
Intro: The new democratic styles of politics first appeared on the state and local levels.
A. John Quincy Adam’s Presidency
John Quincy Adams should have worked to create a mass-based party system in 1825. However, he was cold and tactless, and could not build popular support for the ambitious and often farsighted programs he proposed. He wanted the federal government to promote not only manufacturing and agriculture, but also the arts, literature, and science. He did not take any steps to gain reelection. Adams refused to be a party leader, which caused Henry Clay to organize the National Republicans. Clay however had serious handicaps with this task. 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. Jackson was called “Old Hickory”, and he remained vague on many issues to keep the conflicting interest of his coalition united. Jackson was elected in 1828, and his election marked the start of two disciplined national parties competing actively for votes. The people, however, had voted for Jackson as a national hero without any real sense of what he would do with his newly won power.
B. President of the People
Jackson was the representative of the new democracy. He was a man of action and decisiveness, but was also arrogant and vindictive. Even with his flaws, he was a shrewd politician. He displayed a keen sense of public opinion and skillfully read the shifting national mood. He defended the spoils system, in which public offices were given to friends and political supporters. Jackson regarded the cabinet as existing more to carry out his will than to offer counsel.
C. The Political Agenda in the Market Economy
Jackson faced three major problems during his presidency. First, the demand for new lands put continuing pressures on the Indians and brought them into conflict with whites. Secondly, the economies of the North, South, and West came into conflict over the new tariff and whether South Carolina could nullify that law. Finally, new attention was focused on the role of credit and banking in society.
IV. Democracy and Race
Intro: Jackson’s popularity derived not only from defeating the British but also from opening extensive tracts of valuable Indian lands into the market. In 1820, and estimated 125,000 Indians remained east of the Mississippi river. Southern states wanted the government to take over the Indian lands, so Monroe proposed to Congress that the remaining eastern tribes be relocated west of the Mississippi River. A new shift in the attitude toward race and the Indians occurred. After 1815, the dominant white culture stressed “innate” racial differences that could never be erased. A growing number of Americans began to argue that the Indian was a permanently inferior savage who blocked progress.
A. Accommodate or Resist?
Indians and other minorities in the Old Southwest were placed in a difficult situation by this new racial view. As southern whites increased their clamor for Indian removal, tensions among various tribal factions increased. The mixed-bloods in the Seminole tribes took the lead in urging military resistance to any attempt to expel them. John Ross, however, urged the Cherokees to adopt a program of accommodation by adopting white ways to prevent removal. They made it illegal for individual chiefs to sell any more lands to whites. Indians too had been drawn into the web of market relationships, causing society to become more unequal and economic elites to dominate the tribal governments. Cherokee society used slaves to harvest cotton
B. Trail of Tears
Jackson prodded Congress to provide funds for Indian removal. In 1830 Congress passed a removal bill. The Indians however, sued Georgia for trying to remove them in the federal court, and Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that the Indian tribes had full authority over their lands. Jackson however went ahead with plans for removal. The Indians were cheated out of 90% of their land. The Trail of Tears was travelled by 15,000 Indians who were forced to move west. Some Indians chose resistance, such as the Seminoles led by Osceola, but they were unsuccessful. Indians found themselves at the mercy of the pressures of the marketplace and the hardening racial attitudes of white Americans.
C. Free Blacks in the North
Jackson’s Democratic Party was the strongly proslavery and hostile to black rights. This intensifying racism bore down upon free African Americans. Laws were enacted in the North to keep African Americans in inferior positions. Most black northerners lacked meaningful political rights. Black northerners were also denied basic civil rights that whites enjoyed such as testifying in court against whites. Segregation was widely practiced in the free states. Discrimination pushed African American males into the lowest paying and most unskilled jobs. African American women normally continued working after marriage because their wages were critical to the family’s economic survival. A number of anti-black riots erupted in northern cities during these years.
D. The African American Community
Free blacks had long suffered from such oppression and injustice. They responded by founding schools, churches, and mutual aid societies to sustain their communities. Typically, black leaders strove to strike a moderate tone in their published writings and praised whites who embraced the antislavery cause. They even called for a gradual rather than an immediate abolition of slavery. David Walker was an outspoken black leader who urged slaves to use violence to end bondage.
E. Racism Strikes a Deeper Root
The growing virulent racism among whites in the 1820s prompted greater militancy among African Americans. Minstrel shows were used to send the message that African Americans could not cope with freedom and therefore did not belong in the North. Minstrelsy assured these white champions of democracy that they remained superior. The unsettling economic, social, and political changes increased white American’s fear of failure, which stimulated racism. The property-less white males in America relieved their personal tensions caused by lack of success through an increase in hostility to their black neighbors. 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.
V. The Nullification Crisis
Intro: The issue of nullification raised a different question of how would various regions or interest groups accommodate their differences.
A. The Growing Crisis in South Carolina
South Carolina had been particularly hard hit by the depression of 1819. Even when the nation was recovering, many of the state’s cotton planters still suffered. The South Carolinians viewed federal tariffs as the cause of their miseries. When the duty was raised in 1824, they condemned the tax as unfair and claimed that it raised the prices of goods they imported while benefiting other regions of the nation. South Carolina was also concerned about the issue of slavery and did not want it to be made illegal, as they had the largest population of black slaves. Denmark Vesey led a slave conspiracy that was overturned only at the last minute. South Carolinians worried that other undetected conspirators lurked in their midst. The state’s leaders pushed for a stronger constitutional protection of slavery. Congress raised the duty rates in 1828 with the so-called Tariff of Abominations, causing South Carolina to outline for the first time the theory of nullification as published in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest as written by John Calhoun.
B. Calhoun’s Theory of Nullification
John C. Calhoun was the most impressive intellect of his political generation as well as Jackson’s vice president. Calhoun wanted Jackson to reform the tariff on South Carolina, but he and Jackson quarreled. Calhoun addressed the problem of how to protect the rights of a minority in a political system based on the rule of the majority. He argued that the people of each state had the right to nullify any federal law that exceeded the powers granted to Congress under the Constitution. If this was not allowed, the state then had the right to secede from the Union. In opposition, the Nationalist’s Theory of the Union as stated by Senator David Webster said that the Union was not a compact of sovereign states. He also endorsed the doctrine of judicial review which gave the Supreme Court authority to determine the meaning of the Constitution.
C. The Nullifiers Nullified
Congress passed another tariff upon South Carolina in 1832 that gave them no relief, so the legislature of the state called for a popular convention and declared the tariffs null and void. Jackson then issued a Proclamation on Nullification which said that under the Constitution there was no right of secession. He also passed the Force Bill which reaffirmed the president’s military powers. At the same time he urged Congress to reduce the tariff rates. Calhoun then agreed to a compromise tariff. This controversy convinced many southerners that they were becoming a permanent minority.
VI. The Bank War
Intro: Jackson understood the political ties that bound the nation, but he did not understand the economic and financial connections that were linked through banks and markets. He was extremely suspicious of the national bank and its power.
A. The National Bank and the Panic of 1819
The Second Bank of the United States suffered initially from woeful mismanagement from its charter in 1816. During the Panic of 1819, the bank sharply contracted credit and called in loans, fueling the despair and economic depression in America. To many people, banks became a symbol of the commercialization of American society and the passing of a simpler way of life
B. Biddle’s Bank
Nicholas Biddle became president of the national bank in 1823. He was arrogant and wanted to restore the Bank’s reputation, so he set out to provide the nation with a sound currency by regulating the amount of credit available in the economy. Government revenues were originally paid in banknotes (paper money). Biddle wanted banks to demand payment for notes in specie, aka hard gold or silver. This way, banks would only be able to function if they reduced the amount of notes in circulation. Being the government’s official depository gave Biddle’s bank enormous power over state banks and over the economy. Biddle was effective, but workers started to complain that they were being paid in depreciated state banknotes, a practice that in effect cheated workers out of part of their wages. They wanted currency of gold or silver.
C. The Clash Between Jackson and Biddle
Jackson deeply distrusted banks and paper money. He became convinced that banks and paper money threatened to corrupt the Republic. Jackson called for a reform of the banking system, but Biddle did not want to curb the Bank’s power. The Bank’s charter was up for renewal four years early, which when Congress passed Jackson vetoed it as unconstitutional.
D. The Bank Destroyed
The Bank became a central issue of the 1832 election with Henry Clay supporting Biddle and the bank against Jackson. Jackson won reelection, however, and Jackson was determined to destroy the Bank. To cripple the Bank, he ordered all the government’s federal deposits withdrawn. Jackson had to replace the secretary of the treasury with Roger Taney because the act violated federal law and no one else would do it. When the Bank’s charter expired in 1836, no national banking system replaced it. Instead, Jackson continued depositing federal revenues in selected state banks.
E. Jackson’s Impact on the Presidency
During his administration, Jackson had immeasurably enlarged the power of the presidency. Jackson redefined the character of the presidential office and its relationship to the people. He also converted the veto into an effective presidential power, vetoing bills when he thought they were bad policy instead of only if they were unconstitutional. He strengthened the power of the president over Congress. The development of the modern presidency began with Andrew Jackson.
VII. Van Buren and Depression
Intro: The state banks had to rapidly expand the amount of paper money in circulation. A spiraling inflation set in as prices rose 50 percent. Land value rose artificially and quickly. In an attempt to slow the economy, Jackson issued the Specie Circular in July 1836, which decreed that the government would only accept specie for the purchase of public land.
A. “Van Ruin’s” Depression
Jackson’s opponents, the Whigs, were led by Henry Clay and denounced Jackson for dangerously concentrating the power of the presidency. The Whigs embraced Clay’s “American System”, which was designed to spur national economic development and particularly manufacturing. The Whigs advocated a protective tariff, a national bank, and federal aid for internal improvements. The Democrats nominated Martin Van Buren for the 1836 election, who won over three Whig candidates. The country soon entered a serious depression as the cotton market collapsed. Public opinion identified hard times with the policies of the Democratic Party. Van Buren then created an Independent Treasury to keep the government’s funds which would keep them safe but it would also make money unavailable to banks to make loans and stimulate the economy. Unemployment rose drastically.
B. The Whig Triumph
The Whigs nominated Henry Harrison for their candidate in the election of 1840. Harrison was portrayed as a man of the people against Van Buren who was portrayed as a haughty aristocrat. The Whigs prominently involved women in political campaigning. Democrats had no choice but to eventually follow suit. Women’s role in national politics began in 1840, and within a few years their presence at party rallies was commonplace.
VIII. The Jacksonian Party System
Intro: Whigs and Democrats held different attitudes toward the changes brought about by the market, banks, and commerce.
A. Democrats, Whigs, and the Market
The Democrats viewed society as a continuing conflict between “the people” and a set of greedy aristocrats. For Democrats, the Bank War became a battle to restore the old Jeffersonian republic with its values of simplicity, frugality, hard work, and independence. The Democrats wanted the rewards of the market without sacrificing the features of a simple agrarian republic. The Whigs, however, were more comfortable with the market. Economic growth, they saw, would benefit everyone by creating jobs, stimulating demand for agricultural products, and expanding opportunity. They saw no class conflict and deemed banks and corporations a necessity. Whigs and Democrats disagreed over how active government should be. Democrats believed in a limited government, while the Whigs believed in an active government. Democrats believed that religion and politics should be kept clearly separate (but who knows if this is true). The Whigs believed that that government power should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country.
B. The Social Bases of the Two Parties
Neither party could carry an election by appealing exclusively to the rich or the poor. The Whigs, however, enjoyed disproportionate strength among the business and commercial classes, especially following the Bank War. Democrats attracted farmers isolated from the market or people uncomfortable with it. Attitude toward the market, rather than economic position, was more important in determining party affiliation. Religion and ethnic identities also shaped partisanship. Along with the market, democracy had become an integral part of American life.
