Chapter 10: A Democratic Revolution, 1820-1844
The Rise Of Popular Politics
- Expansion of the franchise was the most dramatic symbol of the Democratic Revolution.
- As early as the 1810s, some states had extended the right to vote to almost all white men, bring many farmers and wage earners into the political arena by ending tradition property qualifications for voting.
- Nowhere else in the world did ordinary men have so much power.
· The Decline of the Notables and the Rise of Parties
- The American Revolution weakened the deferential society of the colonial era, but it did not overthrow it.
- Only two state constitutions (VT and PA) allowed all male tax-payers to vote; and even in those states, families in the low and middle ranks continued to accept the leadership of their social “betters.”
- Local notables managed elections by building up an “interest”: lending money to small farmers, giving business to storekeepers, and treating their tenants to rum at election time.
- This was a gentry-dominated system that excluded men without wealth and powerful family connections from running for office.
· The Advance of Democracy
- The struggle to expand the suffrage began in the 1810s, when reformers in MD challenged local notables in the language of Revolutionary-era republicans, condemning property qualifications as a “tyranny” that endowed “one class of men with privileges which are denied to another.”
- These reformers began to elect men who dressed simply and endorsed democracy, even if those politicians favored policies that benefited those with substantial wealth.
- Smallholding farmers and ambitious laborers in the Midwest and Southwest pushed forward this challenge to the traditional hierarchical social and political order.
- Once in public office, men from modest backgrounds enacted laws that restricted imprisonment for debt, kept taxes low, and allowed farmers to claim squatters’ rights to unoccupied land.
- By the mid-1820s, only a few states – NC, VA, and RI – required the ownership of freehold property for voting, while most other states had instituted universal white male suffrage.
- Democratic politics was contentious and often corrupt as well.
- Powerful entrepreneurs and speculators – both notables and self-made men – demanded government assistance for their business enterprises and paid bribes to get it.
· Martin Van Buren and the Rise of Parties
- The appearance of political parties encouraged debate on issues of government policy.
- But as the power of notables waned, political parties became more prominent, and by the 1820s, parties in a number of states were highly disciplined organizations managed by professional politicians, often middle-class lawyers and journalists.
- Martin Van Buren of NY was the chief architect of the emerging system of party government, first at the state and then at national level.
- He rejected the traditional republican belief that political parties were dangerous and argued that the opposite was true.
- Having defended the legitimacy of political parties, Van Buren undertook to create one of his own.
- From 1817-1821, he turned his “Bucktail” supporters into the first statewide political machine, the Albany Regency.
- When Van Buren and the Regency won control of the NY legislature in 1821, they acquired a political “interest” much greater than that of the notables – the power to appoint some 6,000 of their followers to positions in NY’s legal bureaucracy of judges, justices of the peace, sheriffs, deed commissioners, and coroners.
- This was an example of a spoils system was fair, Van Buren said, because it would be “sometimes in favour of one party, and sometimes of another.”
- To ensure the passage of important legislation, Van Buren insisted on party discipline and required elected officials to follow the dictates of the party caucus.
· The Election of 1824
- After the War of 1812, the aristocratic Federalist Party virtually disappeared, and the Republican Party broke up into competing factions.
- As the election of 1824, approached, no fewer than five candidates, all calling themselves Republicans, campaigned for the presidency. They were…
- John Quincy Adams
- Enjoyed national recognition, and his MA origin gave him the electoral votes of New England.
- John C. Calhoun
- Withdrew from the race when he realized Crawford’s popularity in the south, and endorsed Andrew Jackson.
- William H. Crawford
- He spoke for the south, and feared the “consolidation” of political power in Washington.
- He denounced the American System
- Henry Clay
- Formed his candidacy around domestic issues.
- He also promoted the American System, an integrated program of national economic development similar to the Commonwealth policies pursued by state governments.
- Andrew Jackson
- Was the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, he benefited from the wave of patriotism that flowed from the War of 1812.
- Because no candidate received an absolute majority in the election, the decision fell to the House of Representatives. And when they met in February of 1825, Henry Clay assembled a coalition of congressmen from New England and the Ohio River Valley that voted Adams into the presidency.
- In response to Clay’s help, Adams appointed Clay his secretary of state, then the traditional stepping-stone to presidency.
· The Last Notable President: John Quincy Adams
- Adams called for bold national leadership, and that everyone needed to “improve the conditions of himself and his fellow men.”
- He called for the establishment of a national university in Washington, extensive scientific explorations in the Far West, and a uniform standard of weights and measures.
- More importantly, he endorsed Henry Clay’s American System of national economic development and its three key elements…
1. Protective tariffs to stimulate manufacturing.
2. Federally subsidized roads and canals to facilitate commerce.
3. A national bank to control credit and provide a uniform currency.
· Resistance to the American System
- Manufacturers, entrepreneurs, and growers in the Northeast and Midwest welcomed Adams’s policies, but they won little support in the South, where planters opposed protective tariffs because…
- They raised the price of manufactures.
- Smallholders feared powerful banks that could force them into bankruptcy.
- Other politicians objected to the American System on constitutional grounds.
- One of these politicians was James Madison, who argued that these projects were the sole responsibility of the states, a sentiment that was widely shared among Old Republicans.
- Another one of these politicians was Martin Van Buren, who was now a member of the US Senate, and he joined the Old Republicans in defeating most national subsidies for roads and canals.
· The Tariff Battle
- A large battle of the Adams administration came over tariffs.
- The tariffs of 1816 and 1824 taxed imports of cheap English cotton cloth and imports of iron goods/more-expensive woolen and cotton textiles respectively.
- When Van Buren and his Jacksonian allies won control of Congress in the election of 1826, they proposed higher tariffs on wool, hemp, and other imported raw materials, in hopes to win the support of wool- and hemp-producing farmers in NY, OH, and KY for Jackson’s presidential campaign in 1828.
- Disregarding southern protests, northern Jacksonians joined with Adams and Clay’s supporters to enact the Tariff of 1828, which significantly raised duties on raw materials, textiles, and iron goods.
- These ever increasing tariffs enraged the South, because as the world’s cheapest producer of raw cotton, the South did not need a tariff to protect its main industry.
- Furthermore, because the tariffs caused prices of manufactures to increase, southern planters lost about $100 million a year.
- Ignoring the Jacksonians’ support for the Tariff of 1828, most southerners blamed President Adams for the new act.
- Adams primary weakness was his increasingly out-of-date political style, as he was the last notable to serve in the White House. He was aloof, moralistic, and paternalistic.
- Rather than “run” for reelection in 1828, Adams “stood” for it, telling supporters, “If my country wants my services, she must ask for them.”
· “The Democracy” and the Election of 1828
- Martin Van Buren and the professional politicians handling Andrew Jackson’s campaign had no reservations about running for the presidency.
- Van Buren championed policies that appealed both northern farmers and artisans and to southern slave owners and smallholders who had voted for the Virginia Dynasty.
- In addition, John C. Calhoun brought his SC allies into Van Buren’s party and Jackson’s close friends in TN rallied voters there and throughout the states of the Old Southwest.
- Initially, the Jacksonians called themselves Democratic republicans; but as the campaign wore on, they became democrats or “the Democracy,” names that conveyed their egalitarian message.
- Jackson’s message of equal rights and popular rule appealed to many social groups.
- His open hostility to business corporations and to Clay’s American System also won support among northeastern artisans and workers who felt threatened by industrialization.
- In the Southeast and the Midwest, Old Hickory garnered votes because of his well-known hostility toward Native Americans reassured white farmers who wanted the Indians removed from their ancestral lands.
- In 1824, littler more than a quarter electorate had voted;; in 1828, more than half of all potential voters went to the polls, and 56% cast their ballots for the senator from TN.
The Jacksonian Presidency
- American-style political democracy ushered Andrew Jackson into office.
- Subsequently, Jackson used his popular mandate to transform the presidency and the policies of the national government.
- During his two terms in office, he…
- Enhanced the authority of the president over that of Congress.
- Destroyed the nationalistic American System.
- Ordained a new ideology for the Democracy.
· Jackson’s Agenda: Rotation and Decentralization
- Although Jackson had a formal cabinet, he relied primarily on an informal group of advisors that came to be known as the Kitchen Cabinet, made up of…
- Preston Blair
- Amos Kendall
- Roger B. Taney
- Martin Van Buren
- Following Van Buren’s example in NY, Jackson used patronage to create a loyal and disciplined national party.
- He also utilized the spoils system when he dispensed government jobs to help his friends and to win support for his legislative program.
- His first priority as president was to destroy the American System. He rejected national support for transportation projects, which he also opposed on constitutional grounds.
· The Tariff and Nullification
- The Tariff of 1828 had helped Jackson win the presidency, but it saddled him with a major political crisis.
- Opposition from the South, especially in SC (the only state with an African American majority – 56%) where the slave owners lived in fear of a black rebellion.
- The crisis began in 1832, when high-tariff congressmen ignored southern warnings that they were “endangering the Union” and passed new legislation that retained the high rates of the Tariff of Abominations.
- In response, the SC government boldly adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared…
- That the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 to be null and void.
- Prohibited the collection of those duties in SC.
- Threatened secession if federal officials tried to collect them.
- South Carolina’s act of nullification rested on the constitutional arguments developed in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828) written anonymously by Vice President John C. Calhoun.
- It argued that the tariffs were unconstitutional, that the states had a right to interpretation of the Constitution, and that state conventions could decide if a congressional law was unconstitutional and declare it null and void within the state’s borders.
- President Jackson’s response to South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification was direct: Jackson declared that nullification violated the Constitution and was “unauthorized by its spirit … and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”
- In 1833, Congress passed the Force Bill at Jackson’s request, which authorized the president to use military force to compel SC to obey national laws.
- His compromise worked in that Jackson successfully addressed the economic demands of the South while upholding the constitutional principle that no state could nullify a law of the US.
· The Bank War
- In the middle of the tariff crisis, Jackson also faced another economic challenge, this time from the political supporters of the Second Bank of the United States.
- Founded in Philadelphia in 1816, the bank was a privately managed institution that held a 20 year charter from the federal government.
- Most ordinary Americans did not understand the regulatory role the Second Bank played; they were simply worried about the national bank’s ability to force bank closures, which left them holding worthless paper notes.
· Jackson Vetoes the Rechartering Bill
- Although the Bank had many enemies, it was a political miscalculation by its friends that brought its downfall.
- In 1832, Jackson’s opponents in Congress, led by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, persuaded Biddle to seek an early extension of the Bank’s charter. However, Jackson vetoed the bill that rechartered the bank, and he did so with a masterful veto message that blended constitutional arguments with class rhetoric and patriotic fervor.
- Jackson’s attack on the bank carried him to victory in the election of 1832, whilst his former VP John C. Calhoun resigned in order to advance Southern interests as a senator from SC.
- In lieu of Calhoun, Jackson selected longtime political ally Martin Van Buren as his Vice Presidential running mate.
· The Bank Destroyed
- Early in 1833, Jackson launched an assault on the Second Bank, which still had four years left on its original charter.
- The “bank war” escalated into an all-out political battle. In March 1834, Jackson’s opponents in the Senate passed a resolution written by Henry Clay that censured the president and warned of executive tyranny.
- Jackson was not deterred by these or the widespread opposition in Congress to his policies. “The Bank is trying to kill me but I will kill it,” he vowed to Van Buren. And so he did, when it’s charter expired in 1836, he prevented its renewal.
- Jackson had destroyed both national banking – the creation of Alexander Hamilton – and the American System of protective tariffs and internal improvements instituted by Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams.
- This resulted in a profoundly reduced economy and the draining of the creative energy of the national government.
· Indian Removal
- The status of Native American peoples posed an equally complex political problem.
- By the late 1820s, white voices throughout the states and territories of the South and Midwest were calling for the Indian Peoples to be moved and resettled west of the Mississippi River.
- This seemed to be the only way to protect Indian societies from alcohol, financial exploitation, and the loss of their culture.
- Most Indians, however, did not want to leave their ancestral lands. The Old Southwest was home to the so-called Five Civilized Tribes…
- The Cherokees
- The Creeks
- The Chickasaws
- The Choctaws
- The Seminoles
- Actually, a number of prominent Indians had adopted the institutions and the lifestyle of southern planters, in that many owned their own slaves.
- In 1827, mixed-blood Cherokees introduced a new charter of government modeled directly on the US Constitution.
- However, what the Cherokees wanted carried no weight with the Georgia legislature, and in 1802, Georgia received the okay to extinguish Indian landholdings in the state.
- Andrew Jackson supported Georgia, and withdrew federal troops that had protected Indian enclaves there and in Alabama and Mississippi. The States, he declared, were sovereign within their borders.
- Jackson then pushed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 through Congress
- The Cherokees eventually took their case to the Supreme Court, claiming the status of a “foreign nation.”
- Chief Justice John Marshall, however, writing for the majority, denied the Cherokees’ claim of independence, declaring that Indian peoples were “domestic dependent nations.”
- Instead of guaranteeing the Cherokees’ territory, the US government took it from them.
- After negotiating a removal treaty with a minority Cherokee faction in 1835, American officials insisted that all Cherokees abide by it.
- When only 2,000 of the 17,000 complied by the deadline, President Van Buren ordered troops to enforce the treaty. They forcibly marched 14,000 Cherokees in a journey dubbed the Trail of Tears, as over 3,000 Cherokees died on the way.
- The last remaining Native population was the Seminoles in modern-day Florida.
- With the aid of runaway slaves who had married into the tribe, the Seminoles fought a successful guerrilla war against the US Army during the 1840s and retained their lands in Florida, which was still a sparsely settled frontier region.
· The Jacksonian Impact
- Jackson’s legacy, like that of every great president, is complex and rich.
- Assuming the role of “direct representative of the American people” during the nullification crisis, he upheld national authority by threatening the use of military force, laying the foundation for Lincoln’s defense of the Union a generation later.
- More importantly, Andrew Jackson reinvigorated the Jeffersonian tradition of a limited and frugal central government.
· Roger B. Taney and the Court
- Jackson also undermined the constitutional jurisprudence of John Marshall by appointing Roger B. Taney as Marshall’s successor.
- During Taney’s long tenure as chief justice from 1835-1864, he partially reversed the nationalist and property-rights decisions of the Marshall court and gave constitutional legitimacy to Jacksons policies endorsing states’ rights and free enterprise.
· States Embrace Classical Liberal Doctrines
- Inspired by Jackson and Taney’s example, Democrats in the various states mounted their own constitutional revolutions.
- From 1830-1860, twenty states called conventions to write new constitutions that would extend democracy.
- The revised constitutions were more democratic because they usually gave the vote to all white men and reapportioned state legislatures on the basis of population.
- Many of them also introduced the principles of classical liberalism, or laissez-faire – that the government’s role in the economy should be limited.
- As President, Jackson had destroyed the American system and its program of national government subsidies; now his disciples in the states set out to undermine the Commonwealth philosophy.
- The Commonwealth philosophy was the use of chartered corporations and state funds to promote economic development.
- Jacksonians said that “the world is governed too much,” and condemned government-granted special privileges and embraced a small-government, laissez-faire outlook.
Class, Culture, and the Second Party System
- The rise of the Democracy and Jackson’s tumultuous presidency sparked the creation in the mid-1830s of a second national party – the Whigs – and a new party system.
- Over the next two decades, the Whigs and the Democrats would compete fiercely for votes.
- Many evangelical Protestants became Whigs, while most Catholic immigrants and traditional Protestants joined the Democrats.
- By debating issues of economic policy, class power, and moral reform, party politicians offered Americans a clear choice between the two competing programs and political leaders.
· The Whig Worldview
- The Whig Party began in 1834, when a group of congressmen banded together to oppose Andrew Jackson’s policies and his high-handed, “kinglike” conduct.
- They took the name Whigs to identify themselves with the pre-Revolutionary American and British Parties that had opposed the arbitrary actions of British Monarchs.
- They accused “King Andrew I” of violating the Constitution by creating a “spoils system” and increasing presidential authority.
· Whig Ideology
- Initially, the Whigs were a diverse group drawn from various political factions and outlooks.
- However, under the leadership of Senators Webster (MA), Clay (KY), and Calhoun (SC), the Whigs gradually articulated a distinct vision/platform.
- Their goal, like that of the Federalists of the 1790s, was a political world dominated by men of ability and wealth; unlike the Federalists, though, the Whig elite would be chosen by, not birth.
- To ensure economic success, northern Whigs called for a return to the American System.
- For support to be gathered by the Whigs in the south, they needed a certain amount of appeal in specific policies and politicians rather than agreement with the Whigs’ social vision.
- In addition, some southern politicians became Whigs, because they condemned Andrew Jackson’s crusade against nullification (example is John C. Calhoun).
- Most southern Whigs did not share the Whig Party’s enthusiasm for high tariffs for industry and social mobility for individual Americans, however.
- In fact, in the election of 1834, the Whigs won a majority in the House of Representatives by appealing to evangelical Protestants and the upwardly mobile – prosperous farmers, small-town merchants, and skilled industrial workers.
· Anti-Masonic Influence
- Many of these Whig votes had previously supported the Anti Masons, a powerful but short-lived political party that formed in the late 1820s.
- As the name implies, Anti-Masons opposed the Order of Freemasonry, a republican organization that began in eighteenth century Europe.
- The order was a secret society of men, its rituals closely guarded.
- New members had to be vouched for by a Mason and profess a belief in a supreme being.
- Thurlow Weed, a Rochester newspaper editor, spearheaded the Anti-Masonic Party, which attacked the order for being a secret aristocratic fraternity and ousted its members from local and state offices.
- The Whigs recruited Anti-Masons to their party by endorsing the Anti-Masons’ support for temperance, equality of opportunity, and evangelical moralism.
· The Election of 1836
- In the election of 1836, the Whig Party faced Martin van Buren, the architect of the Democratic Party and Jackson’s handpicked successor.
- Van Buren denounced the American System and warned that its revival would undermine the rights of the states and create an oppressive system of “consolidated government.”
- Positioning himself as a defender of individual rights, Van Buren also opposed the efforts of Whigs and moral reformers to use state laws to impose temperance and national laws to restrict or abolish slavery.
- To oppose Van Buren, the Whigs ran four candidates, each of whom had a strong regional reputation. Their plan was to garner enough electoral votes to throw the contest into the House of Representatives.
- They fell far short, however, with the Whig Tally of 73 votes much less than Van Buren’s 170 votes.
- However, they did gather 49% of the popular vote, which showed that the party’s message of economic and moral improvement appealed not only to middle-class Americans but also to farmers and workers with little or no property.
· Labor Politics and the Depression of 1837-1843
- As the Democrats struggled to maintain their national political supremacy, they faced a challenge on the local level from a new political party made up primarily of artisans and laborers.
- Market expansion and urban growth had swelled the number of nonfarm works, and these workers were demanding attention to their economic and political needs.
· Working Men’s Parties and Unions
- In 1827, artisans and workers in Philadelphia organized the Mechanics’ Union of Trade Associations, a group of fifty unions with ten thousands members.
- The following year, they founded a Working Men’s Party to secure “a just balance of power… between all the various classes.”
- The new party campaigned for the abolition of banks, fair taxation, and universal public education.
- They had a clear agenda. The economic transformation had brought prosperity to bankers and entrepreneurs, but rising prices, and stagnant wages had lowered the standard of living of many urban artisans and wage earners.
- In Philadelphia, the Working Men’s Party demanded higher taxes on the wealthy, and in 184, persuaded the PA legislature to authorize tax-supported schools to educate workers’ children.
- Artisan republicanism – workers’ independence – was the core ideology of the working men’s parties.
- Working men’s candidates initially won office in many cities, but divisions over policy and the parties’ weakness in statewide contests soon took a toll.
- By the mid-1830s, most politically active workers had joined the Democratic Party, which already had a strong base in the dominants farm populations, and urged that party to enact legislation to eliminate protective tariffs and to tax the stocks and bonds of wealthy capitalists.
- As they campaigned for a more egalitarian society workers formed unions to bargain for higher wages for themselves.
- In 1836, the first American “blacklist” was created, and on it were the names of workers who belonged to certain unions. Most business employers fired these workers.
- Employers also brought lawsuits to overturn closed-shop agreements that required them to hire only union members.
· The Panic of 1837 and the Depression
- At this juncture, the Panic of 1837 threw the American economy – and the union movement – into disarray.
- The panic began when the Bank of England, hoping to boost the faltering British economy, sharply curtailed the flow of money and credit to the US.
- Suddenly deprived of British funds, American planters, merchants, and canal corporations had to withdraw specie from domestic banks to pay their commercial debts and interest on their foreign loans.
- Moreover, the price of raw cotton in the South collapsed, plummeting from 20 cents a pound to 10 cents or less.
- The drain of gold and silver to Britain and falling cotton prices set off a financial panic.
- Within weeks, every bank in the US stopped trading specie and curtailed credit. These measures turned a financial panic into an economic crisis because many businesses had to curtail production.
- A second, longer-lasting downturn began in 1839. To revive the economy fater the Panic of 1837, state governments increased their investments in canals and other transportation ventures.
- The American economy fell into a deep depression.
- By 1843, canal construction had dropped by 90%, and prices by nearly 50%.
- Unemployment reached almost 20% of the workforce in seaports and industrial centers.
· The Fate of the Labor Movement
- By creating a surplus of unemployed workers, the depression devastated the labor movement.
- In 1837, 6,000 masons, carpenters, and other building-trades workers lost their jobs in NYC, depleting unions’ rosters and destroying their bargaining power.
- By 1843, most local unions and all the national labor organizations had disappeared, along with their newspapers.
- However, unions’ rights were upheld by the MA Supreme Judicial Court in Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842).
· “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too!”
- The depression had a major impact on politics because many Americans blamed the Democrats for their economic woes.
- In particular, they derided Jackson for destroying the Second Bank and for issuing the Specie Circular of 1836, which had required western settlers to use gold and silver coins to pay for land purchases from the federal government.
- Not realizing that specie shipments to Britain were the main cause of the financial panic, the Whigs – and many voters – blamed Jackson’s policies.
- The public turned its anger on Van Buren, who took office just as the panic struck, and as the depression deepened in 1839, the laissez-faire policy commanded less and less political support.
- Even worse, Van Buren’s major piece of economic legislation, the Independent Treasury Act of 1840, actually delayed recovery.
- This act pulled federal specie out of Jackson’s pet banks and placed it in government vaults, where it did no economic good at all.
· The Election of 1840
- Determined to exploit Van Buren’s weakness, the Whigs organized their first national convention in 1840 and nominated William Henry Harrison of Ohio for president and John Tyler of Virginia for vice President.
- Harrison was the military hero of the Battle of Tippecanoe and the War of 1812, but he also was well advanced in age (68 years old) and had little political experience.
- Panic and depression stacked the political cards against Van Buren, although the contest turned as much on style as on substance.
- The Whigs boosted their electoral hopes by welcoming women to campaign festivities.
- They recognized that women from Yankee families, a key Whig constituency, had already entered American public life through religious revivalism, the temperance movement, and other benevolent activities.
- The Democrats, on the other hand, still failed to recognize women as having any right to venture into the political arena.
· John Tyler versus the Whigs
- Led by Clay and Webster, the Whigs in Congress were poised to reverse Jacksonian policies.
- Their anticipation, however, was short-lived; barely a month after his inauguration, Harrison died of pneumonia, and the nation got “Tyler Too.”
- Ignoring his Whig associates in Congress, who feared a strong president like Jackson, Tyler not only took the presidential oath of office but also declared his intention to govern as he pleased.
- Tyler had only joined the Whigs in protest of Jackson’s stance against nullification, on most other subjects they agreed.
- And thus the new president vetoed Whig Bills that would have raised tariffs and created a new national bank.
- Disgusted, most of the members of Tyler’s cabinet resigned in 1842, and the Whigs expelled him from their party.
- “His Accidency,” as he was referred to by his critics, was now a president without a party.
- The split between Tyler and the Whigs allowed the Democrats to regroup.
- The Party vigorously recruited supporters among subsistence farmers in the North, smallholders in the South, and former members of the Working Men’s parties in the cities.
- They also won success among Irish and German Catholic immigrants by supporting their demands for religious and cultural freedom.
- This pattern of ethnocultural politics, as historians refer to the practice of voting along ethnic and religious lines, became a prominent feature of American life.
- Throughout this period of Whig popularity, the Democrats still remained the majority party in most parts of the nation.
- Their program of equal rights, states’ rights, and cultural liberty was more attractive than the Whig platform of economic nationalism, moral reform, and individual mobility.