The Age of Jackson

Political Characteristics

Changes—

• War of 1812
• Market Revolution
• American System
• Transportation
• Political Participation

Rise of King Andrew

• Childhood
• Professional
• War hero
• Although. . .
• Allied with business
• Land speculator
• Wealthy
• Slave owner
• Duelist
• Lived with married woman

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Election of 1824�

• End of the Virginia dynasty
• Four major candidates
• Henry Clay of Kentucky, Speaker of the House
• William H. Crawford of Georgia
• John Quincy Adams of Massachusetts, Secretary of State for Monroe
• Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, hero of the Battle of New Orleans in 1814

1824 cont.

• Identities were fuzzy—for instance, John C. Calhoun appeared as the Vice-President on the tickets of both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson
• No one had a particular platform or issue on which to run
• They were running on voter appeal

Election Results 1824

• Jackson
• 153,544 votes
• 99 electoral votes
• 42.16%
• Adams
• 108,740 votes
• 84 electoral votes
• 31.89 %
• Crawford
• 46,618 votes
• 41 electoral votes
• 12.95%
• Clay
• 47,136 votes
• 37 electoral votes
• 12.99%

Election Results

• Because no candidate had a majority of the electoral votes, according to the 12^th Amendment, the House of Representatives votes and selects a winner from the top three candidates
• Henry Clay was the candidate dropped. He presided over the vote because he was the Speaker of the House

Corrupt Bargain

• Clay hated Jackson
• Clay and Adams were opposite personalities
• Clay was a free-living gambler and duelist
• Adams was puritanical
• Clay and Adams had some things in common
• Both were fervid nationalists
• Both were advocates of the American System
• Clay supported Adams and Adams made Clay his Secretary of State
• There was no proof of the “corrupt bargain”
• Clay was the logical choice for Secretary of State
• Adams was scrupulously honest
• If a bargain had been struck, it was the common practice of the time

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Adams as President

• First “minority” president
• Refused to oust efficient office holders of other parties (removed only 12 officials)
• Was a nationalist
• Supported roads and canals
• Proposed a national university
• Proposed a federally-funded observatory
• Attempted to curb speculation
• Attempted to deal fairly with the Indians

Adams Faced Other Problems

• To support his nationalist proposals would require the continuation of the hated tariffs to raise money
• He lost the support of the South because they feared that if the government could meddle in local concerns like roads, canals, and education, the government could try to do something about slavery

Election of 1828

• Andrew Jackson began to campaign on February 9, 1825, the day after the House vote
• Only two candidates ran
• Adams, who selected the oak to represent his campaign and was viewed as a corrupt aristocrat
• Jackson who was seen as a rough-hewn frontiersman, champion of the common man, and “Old Hickory”.

Election of 1828

• The race was full of mudslinging from the start
• Jackson’s followers said of Adams
• Billiard table and chess set purchased with own money were depicted as “gaming tables”
• He was accused of taking large sums of federal money over the years (no attention was paid to the fact he had earned it)
• He was accused of procuring a servant girl for the Russian tsar—”pimping”
• Adams’ followers said of Jackson
• His mother was a prostitute
• His wife was an adultress
• Jackson was a duelist who had killed many men
• Jackson hanged 6 mutinous militia men while in Tennessee

Election Results

• Jackson won the west, the south including Chesapeake, and Pennsylvania
• Adams won the middle states and New England
• Jackson won 178 electoral votes
• Adams won 83 electoral votes

Jackson as President

• First president from the West
• First president nominated in a formal party convention
• Second president without a college education (Washington was first)
• First president to have risen from the masses (although he was not really one of them)
• A man of contradictions

Jackson’s Presidency

• Presidential “Brawl”
• Retrenchment
• Spoils system
• No Cabinet meetings (Kitchen Cabinet)
• Supremacy of President
• Broad use of veto

Jackson, the President cont.

• Spoils system
• System of rewarding loyal supporters with government positions
• Named in 1832 by Sen. William Marcy when he made the statement “To the victor belongs the spoils of the enemy.”
• “Cleaned house” in Washington (no significant changes had occurred since Jefferson and then not many were made
• Illiterates, incompetents, and plain crooks were given positions of public trust (Samuel Swartwout is an example)
• Promoted two-party system because “rewards” were reason to pick a party and stick to it

Jackson cont.

• Tariff of Abominations
• Tariffs protected American manufactures
• They drove prices up
• There was the danger of retaliatory tariffs from foreign countries
• In 1828, a high tariff was proposed in order to ruin Adams—It passed
• Tariffs hurt the South the most
• The Northeast was enjoying a manufacturing boom
• The West was prospering because of increased property values
• The South, however, with its new reliance on cotton was forced to sell their cotton on the world market unprotected by tariffs
• The Missouri Compromise of 1820 had kindled anxiety about the federal government interfering with slavery

Jackson—The Bank War

• Second National Bank
• 1823 Nicholas Biddle becomes the bank’s president
• 1832—Congress tries to renew charter early
• Jackson vetoes
• Jackson decides to transfer federal funds to state banks
• Result comes in 1837—economic panic

Jackson—Indian Removal

• 1830 Indian Removal Act
• Purchase all Indian lands
• Resettle Indians west of Mississippi River
• Problems with Cherokee Nation in Ga.
• 1829—gold discovered
• Cherokee Nation v. Georgia 1831
• Worcester v. Georgia 1832
• 1835 Treaty of New Echota
• Removal
• 1831-32 Choctaws
• 1836 Creeks
• 1837 Chicasaws
• 1838 Cherokees—Trail of Tears
• 1842 last of Seminoles

Jackson—Nullification Crisis

• 1828 Tariff of Abominations
• South Carolina Exposition and Protest—John C. Calhoun
• Hayne/Webster debate
• 1832 state v federal power
• Jackson reinforces troops in federal forts in SC, sends warships to SC harbors
• Asks Congress for “force bill” to allow federal gov’t to invade rebellious states
• Congress lowers tariff causing SC to repeal nullification of tariff but replacing it with nullification of the “force bill.”
• Jackson chooses to ignore nullification of “force bill” because he won’t have to use it anyway.

Election of 1832

• Jackson
• Although a proponent of single-term rotation, ran again
• “Jackson Forever: Go the Whole Hog”
• Henry Clay
• Had the advantage of a $50 thousand campaign fund
• “Freedom and Clay”
• Anti-Masonic Party
• Began in New York in reaction to suspicious secret societies called Masons
• Jackson was a Mason
• Became an anti-Jackson party
• Attracted evangelical Protestants and reformers

Election of 1832 cont.

• National nominating conventions were organized for all three parties
• The Anti-Masons and National Republicans (Clay) issued formal party platforms
• Jackson won
• 687,502 to 530,189 votes
• 219 to 49 electoral votes

Development of the Whig Party

• Diverse elements were glued by a hatred of Jackson
• Supporters of the American System
• Southerners supported states’ rights
• Northerners were industrialists
• Evangelical Protestants and Anti-Masons

Election of 1836

• Jackson supported Martin Van Buren
• Felt Van Buren would be a “yes” man to continue Jackson legacy
• “Rigged” the convention
• Whigs could not pull things together to select one single candidate
• A group of “favorite sons” ran
• Leader was William Henry Harrison
• Van Buren won
• 765,483 to 739,795 popular votes
• 170 to 124 electoral votes

Martin Van Buren, 8^th President�“The Little Magician”

• First president born under the American flag
• Presidency was handicapped
• He was a “machine-made” candidate which irritated the real Democrats
• He had to follow the dynamic Jackson
• He carried no popular support of his own
• He inherited Jackson’s enemies
• A rebellion in Canada created incidents on the frontier which angered the British
• Anti-slavery agitators were at work in the North which angered the South
• He inherited the makings of a severe depression

Panic of 1837

• Set up by Jackson’s veto of the bank charter
• Wildcat banks of the west issued their own currency
• Land speculators made purchases with borrowed capital
• Crops failed
• Two major British banks failed in 1836 and they called in foreign loans
• Factories failed causing widespread unemployment
• Whigs tried to save the economy but Van Buren chose to follow Jackson’s view that the federal government should not interfere with the economy and would not support their plan
• Van Buren proposed the Divorce Bill which would pull federal funds completely out of banks and put them in an Independent Treasury
• In 1840 the Independent Treasury Bill passed
• It was repealed one year later by the victorious Whigs

Election of 1840

• Van Buren (“Martin Van Ruin”) ran for the Democrats
• William Henry Harrison (“Old Tippecanoe”) ran for the Whigs
• This time the Whigs announced no party platform
• A Democrat editor depicted Harrison as an “impoverished old farmer who should have been content with his pension, a log cabin, and a barrel of hard cider”
• The symbol for the campaign became log cabins and barrels of cider
• The slogan was “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too”

(John Tyler was Harrison’s running mate)

Election of 1840 Results

• Harrison won
• 1,274,624 to 1,127,781 popular votes
• 234 to 60 electoral votes

The Election of 1840�Brought About Major Changes

• Triumph of populist democracy
• No longer were the people championed by aristocrats, they were now represented by men they selected
• Establishment of the two-party system
• Whigs and Democrats
• Both grew from Jeffersonian republicanism
• The Democrats glorified liberty of the individual and states’ rights
• The Whigs believed in the natural harmony of society, the value of the community, protective tariffs, internal improvements, and public schools
• Both were based on support from the large mass of people
• Both parties included members from all social classes
• Both parties included members from all sections of the country and helped to slow down the sectionalism that would eventually lead to the Civil War
• The high offices in both parties were still filled by the leading citizens of the country

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