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Chapter 13
RISE OF MASS DEMOCRACY
Politics Of The People
 When the Federalists had dominated,
democracy was suspect, but by the 1820s, it
was widely appealing.
 Politicians now had to bend to appease and
appeal to the masses.
 Aristocrats were scorned.
 Western Indian fighters and/or militia
commanders, like Andrew Jackson, Davy
Crocket, and William Henry Harrison, were
quite popular.
Jacksonian Democracy
 Jacksonian Democracy said that
whatever governing that was to be done
should be done directly by the people.
 Called the New Democracy, it was based
on universal manhood suffrage.
 In 1791, Vermont became the first
state admitted to the union to allow
all white males to vote in the
elections.
 Bigwigs who used to have power
sneered at the “coonskin congressmen”
and the “bipeds of the forest,”
Voting Requirements
in the Early 1800s
Election of 1824
 In the election of 1824, there were four towering
candidates: Andrew Jackson of Tennessee,
Henry Clay of Kentucky, William H. Crawford
of Georgia, and John Q. Adams of Mass.
 All four called themselves Republicans.
 In the results, Jackson got the most popular votes
and the most electoral votes, but he failed to get
the majority in the Electoral College.
 Adams came in second in both, while Crawford
was fourth in the popular vote but third in the
electoral votes. Clay was 4th in the electoral vote.
 By the 12th Amendment, the top three Electoral
vote getters would be voted upon in the House of
Reps. and the majority (over 50%) would be
elected president.
Corrupt Bargain?
 Clay was eliminated, but he was the
Speaker of the House, and since
Crawford has recently suffered a
paralytic stroke and Clay hated
Jackson,
 When Clay was appointed Secretary of
the State, traditional stepping-stone to
the presidency, Jacksonians cried foul
play.
 John Randolph publicly assailed
the alliance between Adams and
Clay.
 Evidence against any possible deal has
never been found
A
“Corrupt
Bargain?”
A Yankee Misfit in the White House
 Austere.
 Short, bald, stiff and frosty. Loner.
 Very successful Sec. of State, but was
not well suited to the presidency.
 How he won made things worse
 He refused to play the spoils game;
made supporters grumpy
 History Channel V John Q. Adams
p259
Adams’ Unpopular Policies
 John Quincy Adams was a man of puritanical
honor
 He rejects the spoils system.
 In his first annual message, Adams urged
Congress on the construction of roads and
canals, proposed for a national university,
and advocated support for an astronomical
observatory.
 Public reaction was mixed: roads were good,
but observatories weren’t important, and
Southerners knew that if the government did
anything, it would have to continue
collecting tariffs.
In 1839, slaves held captive
aboard the ship La
Amistad revolted, took
control of the vessel, and
tried to sail it back to
Africa. The ship was seized
by an American frigate and
taken to the U.S., setting
off a controversy that
pitted the courts against
the President and raised
the consciousness of the
North about the evils of
slavery. The La Amistad
incident was a milestone in
the development of the
abolitionist movement.
Going “Whole Hog” For Jackson In 1828
 Jacksonians argued, “Should the people
rule?”
 They successfully turned public opinion
against an honest and honorable Chief
Executive.
 However, Adams’ supporters also hit below
the belt, even though Adams himself
wouldn’t stoop to that level.
 Jackson’s mother a prostitute, called he
an adulterer
 John Q. Adams had a billiard table and a set
of chessmen,
 The Jacksonians criticizing Adams’ incessant
spending.
The Jacksonian “Revolution of 1828”
 Jackson got 647,286 popular votes to Adams’
508,064 and he also beat John in the Electoral
College, 178 to 83.
 Jackson had support from the West and South,
while New England liked Adams.
 The political center of gravity was shifting west
 Jackson sped up the process of transferring national
power from the countinghouse to the farmhouse,
and became the “People’s President,” not the
aristocrat.
 Adams still had a distinguished political career
after presidency, getting elected to the House of
Reps. of Massachusetts,
 When he died in 1848, his funeral was the greatest
pageant Washington D.C. had ever seen, and his
popularity was greater near then end of his political
career than during its zenith.
Jackson Inauguration
First Kegger in the White House?
The Center of Population in the
Country Moves WEST
Jackson’s Philosophy
Jackson’s Firsts:
 First president from the west
 First to be nominated at a formal convention
 First President without a college education (except
Washington)
 First President who not part of the educated elite that
was at the heart of the revolution and the Constitution.
 He was called “Old Hickory” by his troops
because of his toughness.
 Suspicious of the federal government because it was
remote from the people;
 Believed in limited Fed. government (See Jefferson)
 Hostile to the active federal econ. role of American
System; National Bank
 Strong believer in the Union;
 opposed nullification and those who did not believe
that federal power was supreme. (See Hamilton)
Technology
Jackson Nationalizes the Spoils System
 The spoils system: rewarding
supporters with good positions in
office.
 Jackson believed that experience
counted, but that and erasing the
old.
 Since the election of 1800, many
positions had not changed.
 Increases with each new president
The Tricky “Tariff of Abominations”
 New England and East like
Tariffs. Reduces competition.
 South and West hate tariffs.
 Economic concerns
 Political/Sectional concern
 Jackson’s supporters try to put
JQ Adams in political trap by
pushing for a very high tariff.
 Plan backfires, and tariff is
passed.
 South is outraged at Adams,
and calls it “Tariff of
Abomination”
“Nullies” In South Carolina
 In an attempt to meet the South’s demands,
Congress passed the Tariff of 1832, a
slightly lower tariff
 The state legislature of South Carolina called
for the Columbia Convention. The
delegates of the convention called for the
tariff to be void within South Carolina.
 Henry Clay introduced the Tariff of 1833. It
called for the gradual reduction of the Tariff
of 1832 by about 10% over 8 years. By 1842,
the rates would be back at the level of 1816.
 The compromise Tariff of 1833 ended the
dispute over the Tariff of 1832 between the
South and the White House. The
compromise was supported by South
Carolina but not much by the other states of
the South.
Transplanting the Tribes
 Jackson’s Democrats were
committed to western expansion,
but such expansion meant
confrontation with the Indians
who inhabited the land east of the
Mississippi.
 The Society for Propagating the
Gospel Among Indians was
founded in 1787 in order to
Christianize Indians.
 The five civilized tribes were the
Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws,
Chickasaws, and
Seminoles. President Jackson
wanted to move the Indians so the
white men could expand.
Indian Removal Act
 Indian Removal Act (1830).
 “voluntary” removal of Indians
from southeast to reservations in
Eastern Kansas and Oklahoma.
 Forced removal of over 100,000
Indians.
 Heaviest blow falls on the Five
Civilized Tribes
 Theory behind the policy
 Trail of Tears
 Bureau of Indian Affairs -1836
 Black Hawk Rebellion
Indian Removal
The Bank War
 President Andrew Jackson despised the Bank of
the.
 The Bank of the United States was a private
institution, accountable not to the people
 The bank minted gold and silver coins. Nicholas
Biddle, the president of the Bank of the United
States, held an immense power over the nation’s
financial affairs.
 The Bank War erupted in 1832 when Daniel
Webster and Henry Clay presented Congress with
a bill to renew the Bank’s charter.
 Clay pushed to renew the charter in 1832 to make
it an issue for the election of that year. He felt that
if Jackson signed off on it, then Jackson would
alienate the people of the West who hated the
Bank. If Jackson vetoed it, then he would alienate
the wealthy class of the East who supported the
Bank.
 The veto showed that Jackson felt that the
Executive Branch had more power than the
Judicial Branch in determining the
Constitutionality of the Bank of the United States.
The Election of 1832
 The United States presidential election of 1832 saw incumbent
President Andrew Jackson, candidate of the Democratic Party,
easily win reelection against Henry Clay of Kentucky.
 Jackson won 219 of the 286 electoral votes cast, easily defeating
Clay, the candidate of the National Republican party and AntiMasonic Party candidate William Wirt. John Floyd, who was not a
candidate, received the electoral vote of South Carolina.
Burying Biddle’s Bank
 The Bank of the United States’s charter expired
in 1836. Jackson wanted to make sure that the
Bank would be exterminated.
 In 1833, 3 years before the Bank’s charter ran
out, Jackson decided to remove federal deposits
from its vaults. Jackson proposed depositing no
more funds in the bank and he gradually
shrunk existing deposits by using the funds to
pay for day-to-day expenditures of the
government.
 The death of the Bank of the United States left a
financial vacuum in the American
economy. Surplus federal funds were placed in
several dozen state banks that were political
supportive of Jackson.
 In 1836, “wildcat” currency had become so
unreliable that Jackson told the Treasury to
issue a Specie Circular- a decree that required
all public lands to be purchased with metallic
money. This drastic step contributed greatly to
the financial panic of 1837.
Nicholas
Biddle
p271
The Birth Of The Whigs
 Established in 1834, the Whig Party was a reaction to the
authoritarian policies of Andrew Jackson. “King
Andrew,”
 The term Whig was taken from English politics, the name
of a faction that opposed royal tyranny
 Whig supporters of the American System. In some
respects the Whigs were the descendants of the old
Federalist Party, supporting the Hamiltonian preference
for strong federal action in dealing with national
problems.
 The Whigs supported government programs, reforms,
and public schools. They called for internal
improvements like canals, railroads, and telegraph lines.
 Congress has ALL legislative power
 Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were the unquestioned
luminaries of the Whig Party. Neither was able to
overcome sectional jealousies and gain the coveted
presidency.
The Election of 1836
 Martin Van Buren was Andrew
Jackson’s choice as his successor in
the election of 1836. General William
Henry Harrison was one of the
Whig’s many presidential
nominees. The Whigs did not win
because they did not united behind
just one candidate.
Election of 1836
 Whig candidates
 William Henry Harrison, former U.S.
senator from Ohio
 Daniel Webster, U.S. senator from
Massachusetts
 Hugh L. White, U.S. senator from
Tennessee
 Jackson hand-picks Van Buren as his
successor and engineers his nomination.
 Van Buren won only a narrow majority of
the popular vote, but won electoral vote,
170-124.
Woes for Van Buren
 Skilled politician and very bright.
 Inherited lots of political
problems.
 Party peeved at Jackson
rammed through his
nomination
 Inherits all Jackson’s enemies, but
not Jackson’s support from
common man.
 Jackson’s economic policies
(specie circular) caused economic
downturn.
Depression And Independent Treasury
 The basic cause of the panic of 1837 was
the rampant speculation prompted by a
get-rich scheme. Gamblers in western
lands were doing a “land-office business”
on borrowed capital. The speculative
craze spread to canals, roads, railroads,
and slaves.
 The panic of 1837 caused many banks to
collapse, commodity prices to drop, sales
of public to fall, and the loss of jobs.
 Van Buren proposed the Divorce Bill. Not
passed by Congress, it called for the
dividing of the government and banking
altogether.
 The Independent Treasury Bill was
passed in 1840. An independent treasury
would be established and government
funds would be locked in vaults.
Gone to Texas
 1823 Mexico grants a huge tract of land to
Stephan Austin.
 Mexico’s conditions on settlers
 Why does Mexico open land to
Americans?
 Americans come, but largely ignore the
two conditions.
“Moses” Austin
American Settlement in Texas
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1835, 30,000 Americans in Texas.
Davy Crockett, Sam Bowie and Sam Houston.
Tension between Mexico and Texans
Slavery issue
Mexico’s policies to regain control
Santa Anna
Sam Houston.
First Governor
of Texas; “Big
Drunk”
The Lone Star Rebellion
 Early 1836, Texas declares its
independence with Sam Houston as
commander in chief.
 Santa Anna attacks the Alamo
 Goliad
 Santa Anna defeated at San Jacinto
 Santa Anna captured and forced to sign
treaty under duress. Rio Grande
 Santa Anna quickly repudiated the treaty,
but doesn’t have power to attack again.
Log Cabins and Hard Cider of 1840
 Van Buren nominated by the Dems in 1840;
no strong alternative.
 Whigs passed over Clay and Webster and
nom. William Henry Harrison.
 John Tyler of Va. is his VP
 Harrison platform vague.
 Texas wanted diplomatic recognition from
US.
 Jackson was reluctant to recognize Texas as
an independent republic.
 Why?
 On last day of office he does recognize
Texas.
 Texans want to be part of the US and
request annexation.
 Why was annexation by US politically
complicated?
The Two Party System Emerges
 Two party system began to reemerge
under Jackson and fully reemerged
in the election of 1840 with the
Whigs.
 Both parties were big-tent parties
containing diverse elements
 Were also diverse geographically,
and their presence helped retard the
development of purely sectional
parties
Whigs v. Democrats
 Democrats:
 States rights
 federal restraint in social and
economic affairs
 Champion of individual and
working class.
 Distrusted privileged class’
attempts to usurp government
 Strong in South and West
 Opposed high tariffs as benefiting
eastern business at expense of
farmer.
 Whigs: (Majority)
 willing to use government to
realize their objectives
 argued against using class
differences to appeal to self
interest of one class over another.
 Believed in strong gov’t initiative
such as the Bank US, tariffs,
internal improvements, public
schools and moral reform, such as
slavery.