Download Andrew Jackson`s America

Andrew Jackson's America
Andrew Jackson and the Second American Party System
Unlike the plantation owners George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
and James Monroe and the lawyer John Adams, Jackson rose to the presidency from
more humble origins. Jackson's presidency heralded the "Age of the Common Man,"
although Jackson was not a common man for he owned a plantation himself. He was
not, however, from the political elite and so appealed to ordinary people and unlike his
predecessors actively sought their support. After losing the Election of 1824 in a bitter
contest, Jackson won in 1828 campaigning on the Democratic Republican ticket against
President John Quincy Adams (son of John Adams) who ran as a National
Republican.
Jackson's campaign employed all of the techniques of the new democratic politics. Like
sports today, politics then offered spectacle, camaraderie, and boosterism directed
against not another team but another political party. Instead of wearing the jersey of
your favorite player, you wore your party's badge, carried a placard, and marched in a
parade and instead of attending a game, you went to a political rally to yell and clap
(and probably drink too much).
During his presidency, Jackson's actions inspired intense political opposition. His
opponents organized and by 1836 ran under the Whig Party banner. Jackson's party
that began as the Jeffersonian Republicans became the Democratic Republicans in the
1820s and finally just the Democratic Party that remains today. The Democrats and the
Whigs waged the national political battles that marked the Second American Party
System. The Whigs survived as a national party into the early 1850s when the issues of
immigration and slavery transformed American politics.
The American System
During the Era of Good Feelings, President Monroe and most others in national
government advocated that the federal government nurture the economic and
commercial health of the nation. Remember that in the early years of Washington's
presidency, Hamilton and Jefferson divided the administration as Hamilton proposed the
Bank of the United States and that the federal government promote commercial and
industrial development and Jefferson objected. Gradually the Jeffersonians Madison
and Monroe shifted their position to support Hamilton's ideas although Kentuckian
Henry Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives, was known as the architect of
the American System, a program for national economic development.
The American System consisted of 3 parts:
1. Tariffs to protect American industries. The Tariff of 1816 was the first substantial
protective tariff in American history.
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2. Creation of the Second Bank of the United States in 1816 after the charter for
Hamilton's original Bank of the United States expired in 1811. With a government
contribution of $7 million and capital of $35 million, the Second Bank, as had the First
Bank, provided large-scale financing beyond the means of smaller banks and created a
strong national currency.
3. Funding for internal improvements such as roads and canals. Presidents Madison
and Monroe supported federal funding for interstate projects, but regarded as
unconstitutional funding for local projects and vetoed those requests. New York's Erie
Canal, for example, though 364-miles long was all in New York State and thus received
no federal funding despite attempts by New York State Congressmen.
Transportation Revolution
The Erie Canal was but one of the many examples of the transformation of
transportation that from 1800 to 1850 drmatically affected individual mobility and the
economy. Not only could peopel move more easily but commercial goods could as well.
In 1800 people and goods plodded or more often slogged through mud in spring, dust in
summer, and snow in winter. Towns, counties, states attempted to improve local roads
and private turnpike companies collected tolls to fund their efforts, but roads remained
poor. The National Road was the greatest single federal transportation expense of the
era as its gravel, not dirt, bed extended in stages across the Appalachians to open up
the West and reached Columbus (Ohio) by 1833 and eventually the Mississippi River in
1850.
Transporting goods, especially bulky ones such as corn or wheat, was difficult on any
road and spurred the development of waterborne transportation with steamboats along
river routes and, where those were not available, along canals built to connect those
routes. The New York legislature approved a $7 million bond issue to finance the 364
miles of the Erie Canal that by 1825 linked New York City and the Hudson River system
to the Great Lakes. [Locate it below from Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on
Lake Erie.]
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Map from Allen Johnson, Union and Democracy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1915) and is in the public domain.
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Beginning in 1830, railroads revolutionized transportation. From the first 13 miles of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, by the start of the Civil War 30 years later, railroads ran on
31,000 miles of track.
The video below offers a brief history of railroads in the United States from 1830 to the
1990s. The first 45 seconds explain the early growth or railroads before the Civil War.
Andrew Jackson and the American System
Andrew Jackson entered the White House during the transportation revolution that
saw steamboats plying American rivers, canals opening other transportation corridors,
and railroads beginning to crisscross the country. Jackson disappointed his western
supporters when he vetoed the use of federal funds for the Maysville road in Kentucky
because like Madison and Monroe, Jackson objected to using federal money for local
projects. With his Maysville Veto, Jackson defeated a project dear to his Kentucky rival
Henry Clay.
Jackson vetoed another bill that set the stage for Clay and others to coalesce into
formal political opposition that by 1836 would be known as the Whig Party. The Second
Bank of the United States had a 20-year charter that came up for renewal in 1836. An
1832 effort to renew the charter early precipitated Jackson's veto. He resented the
Bank's power over state banks and its policies that he saw as favoring eastern
businessmen and disadvantaging western farmers. Jackson based his 1832 re-election
campaign on his veto message in which he defended states' rights and presented the
Bank as unconstitutional and a threat to individual economic liberty. Jackson trounced
Clay, but by 1836 opponents of Jackson organized the Whig Party and ran a national
campaign against his vice president Martin Van Buren. The Second American Party
System was now in place with the Democratic versus the Whig Party.
The Bank War continued after the 1832 election and led directly to a recession in the
winter of 1833-34 and then a severe economic panic in 1837. Although President Van
Buren had not provoked the Bank controversy, the economic bust tainted his
administration and in 1840 the Whigs defeated him and won the White House.
In the Maysville and Bank vetoes, Jackson stood tall for states' rights over federal
power, but, as we will see with the Nullification Crisis, Jackson could also defend to the
verge of war federal authority and in Indian Removal presidential authority.
©Susan Vetter 2008, rev. 2011
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