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Eagleton
Digital Archive of American Politics
Jacksonian
Democracy
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After
the contentious election
of 1824 in which John
Quincy Adams was elected by the House of Representatives
over Andrew
Jackson and three other candidates, Jackson succeeded
in defeating President Adams in another bitter race in 1828.
During
the campaign, the long and distinguished government career
of John
Quincy Adams was described as "feeding at the public
trough" and of padding his expense account. He was called
a "pimp" for providing an American girl as "gift"
for the Czar of Russia. He was charged with turning the White
House into a "gambling den" after bringing a billiard
table into the White House. Jackson was portrayed as a "drunk,"
a brawler and an adulterer because his wife Rachel’s
divorce had not been final when they first got married. See
Campaign
of 1828, Dirty Campaigning, Rachel
& Andrew Jackson: A Love Story, Wnpt.net.
The bitterness continued after the results were known;
Adams declined to participate in the Inauguration of his successor.
Jackson's
supporters effectively exploited his humble birth, his status
as a war hero in the Battle of New Orleans and popular resentment
at the so-called "corrupt bargain" of 1824 in which
Adams secured his election by alleged promise of a cabinet
position to Henry Clay, one of the other candidates.
The election
of 1828 also marked the expansion of the voting franchise,
perhaps partly due to the uproar following the election conducted
by the House in 1824. Jackson won by 647,000 votes to 507,000
and by 178-83 in electoral college. Many more people voted
for president than in 1824 since some states were beginning
to let voters, rather than the legislatures, select presidential
electors. The former strict eligibility standards to vote,
usually based on property ownership or some equivalent of
assets, also were being lowered or abolished.
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Cartoon
lampooning President Jackson's imperious style in vetoing
Congressional legislation. Image Source: University
of Virginia
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The framework
for the contemporary two-party system also emerged in the Jacksonian
era. After 1828, the parties would run tickets for both president
and vice president. The modern Democratic
Party was founded under Jackson and held its first national
convention, under the name of the Democratic-Republican Party, when
he ran for a second term in 1832; an anti-Jackson opposition party--the
Whig
Party--also soon organized, with many of its members united
in criticism of Jackson's populist policies and his imperious style.
When the Whigs
disappeared in the early 1850s over regional divisions on slavery,
it was soon replaced by the Republican Party, establishing the basic
partisan structure that continues today.
As President,
Jackson cultivated his reputation as defender of the "Common
Man". At his Inaugural,
he allowed large numbers of citizens into the White House, leading
to the destruction of many of its furnishings, and Jackson left
the building though a window to avoid the mob. In his Inaugural
Address, he proposed the abolition of the Electoral College.
During his two terms, he vetoed more bills than all his predecessors
combined, challenging the view that the only grounds for a presidential
veto were a bill's constitutionality. He also set the model for
political patronage, awarding government jobs which required no
special expertise to friends and supporters.
Jackson's populism
also was illustrated in the controversy over the rechartering of
The Bank of the United States. In 1832, four years prior to the
expiration of its charter, Nicholas
Biddle, the Bank's president, sought legislation to extend the
length of the Bank's charter. When Congress passed the bill, Jackson
vetoed it, framing the issue primarily in terms of the economic
divisions of rich and poor, as well as the resentment toward the
high proportion of its stock held by foreigners. See From
Revolution to Reconstruction: Andrew Jackson: A Brief Biography,
The End of the Bank War, Department
of Humanities, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Yet
Jackson's motivation also may also have been influenced by other
political considerations since the dissolution of the Bank, which
was closely aligned with the financial and political interests of
the Philadelphia financial community where it was based, would benefit
the emerging New York investment market centered on Wall Street
where some of Jackson's supporters had personal interests, as well
as state banks and settlers in the West, who argued that the Bank's
restrictive lending policies adversely affected development of the
frontier. See The
Destruction of the Second Bank of the United States: Rationale and
Effects, Gareth Davis, Trinity
College, University of Dublin. Jackson's veto of the Bank
legislation also led to a request by Senate Whigs for documents
relating to the veto; after Jackson refused to comply, the Senate
passed a resolution of censure, which was later expunged from the
Senate record after Jackson's Democrats gained a Senate majority
in the election of 1836. See March
28, 1834, Senate Censures President, US Senate; Congressional
panel studies Andrew Jackson censure case, Michael Kanish, The Boston
Globe..
The
present corporate body, denominated the president, directors,
and company of the Bank of the United States, will have
existed at the time this act is intended to take effect
twenty years. It enjoys an exclusive privilege of banking
under the authority of the General Government, a monopoly
of its favor and support, and, as a necessary consequence,
almost a monopoly of the foreign and domestic exchange.
The powers, privileges, and favors bestowed upon it in the
original charter, by increasing the value of the stock far
above its par value, operated as a gratuity of many millions
to the stockholders....
The
act before me proposes another gratuity to the holders of
the same stock, and in many cases to the same men, of at
least seven millions more....It is not our own citizens
only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More
than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by
foreigners. By this act the American Republic proposes virtually
to make them a present of some millions of dollars.
....It
appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held
by foreigners and the residue is held by a few hundred of
our own citizens, chiefly of the richest class.
Is
there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank
that in its nature has so little to bind it to our country?
The president of the bank has told us that most of the State
banks exist by its forbearance. Should its influence become
concentered, as it may under the operation of such an act
as this, in the hands of a self-elected directory whose
interests are identified with those of the foreign stockholders,
will there not be cause to tremble for the purity of our
elections in peace and for the independence of our country
in war? Their power would be great whenever they might choose
to exert it; but if this monopoly were regularly renewed
every fifteen or twenty years on terms proposed by themselves,
they might seldom in peace put forth their strength to influence
elections or control the affairs of the nation. But if any
private citizen or public functionary should interpose to
curtail its powers or prevent a renewal of its privileges,
it can not be doubted that he would be made to feel its
influence.
It
is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often
bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes....
Excerpts
from President Jackson's Veto Messsage, July 10, 1832
Source:
The
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
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Another major
controversy of Jackson's Administration related to the constitutional
issues on the nature of the federal union, which would soon be confronted
in the conflict over slavery, presented in the Nullification
Crisis. The conflict first arose in November 1831 when South
Carolina approved an ordinance
of nullification declaring that a federal tariff was unconstitutional.
The tariff was viewed to favor Northern manufacturing, which wanted
protection from foreign imports, over Southern agriculture, which
was heavily dependent on the purchase of foreign goods and the export
of its commodities, including cotton, to foreign buyers. Jackson's
vice president was South Carolina native John
C. Calhoun, who firmly believed states had the right to overrule
federal laws.
The relationship
between Calhoun and Jackson first had become strained when Calhoun's
wife Flordie refused to invite Margaret "Peggy" Eaton,
wife of John Eaton, Jackson's Secretary of War who was a close friend
of Jackson's and former Senator from Tennessee, to social events.
Jackson himself had first met Mrs. Eaton in 1823, when he was elected
to the Senate, and rented a room at the Washington boardinghouse
and tavern owned by Mrs. Eaton's father, William O'Neale, an Irish
immigrant. Subsequently, the then Peggy O'Neale had married a sailor
named Hugh Timberlake, who was assigned by John Eaton as Secretary
of War to go on a voyage, apparently to allow Eaton and Peggy to
conduct an affair during which they openly lived together. Timberlake
died while on the voyage under uncertain circumstances, perhaps
by suicide when he learned of the affair. His widow and Eaton then
married soon after his death. Although Eaton later resigned from
the cabinet, Jackson resented Mrs. Calhoun's social ostracization
of Peggy Eaton, and continued to support John Eaton in the face
of the scandal, later appointing him governor of the Florida territory.
See Andrew
Jackson and the Tavern-Keeper's Daughter, J.
Kingston Pierce,
American History Magazine,
PRIMEDIA History Group.
Jackson and Calhoun later would differ over more substantive policy
issues, which ultimately brought their final split over South Carolina's
position that the federal constitution allowed states to nullify
federal acts with which they disagreed. To enforce its position,
in July 1832 the South Carolina authorized a special convention
authorizing use of its militia to block the collection of the tariff
in the state after February 1, 1833. As the potential for a violent
confrontation increased, the President issued a Proclamation
in December 1832 declaring the South Carolina nullification act
unconstitutional, and setting forth an extensive defense of his
view of the federal union that would later be used extensively in
the debates leading up to the Civil War. Jackson also dispatched
federal troops and warships to South Carolina as the deadline approached.
Calhoun then resigned as vice president to return to the Senate
to lead his state's arguments against the imposition of federal
authority. Violence was averted, however, when Senator Henry
Clay and Calhoun, now in the Senate, partnered to draft a reduced
tariff agreement that pacified South Carolina while allowing the
Federal government to maintain its position that the state could
not prevent the enforcement of federal acts. Calhoun would not abandon
the concept of nullification, however, and later renewed it in his
defense of the South's position on federal intervention over issues
related to slavery.
I
consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States,
assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of
the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution,
unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle
on which It was founded, and destructive of the great object
for which it was formed.
....Fellow-citizens!
the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support
of your government depends the decision of the great question
it involves, whether your sacred Union will be preserved,
and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be
perpetuated.
Excerpts
from President Jackson's Proclamation of December 10, 1832
on nullification
Source:
The
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
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....The
planter, the farmer, the mechanic, and the laborer all know
that their success depends upon their own industry and economy
and that they must not expect to become suddenly rich by
the fruits of their toil. Yet these classes of society form
the great body of the people of the United States; they
are the bone and sinew of the country; men who love liberty
and desire nothing but equal rights and equal laws and who,
moreover, hold the great mass of our national wealth, although
it is distributed in moderate amounts among the millions
of freemen who possess it. But, with overwhelming numbers
and wealth on their side, they are in constant danger of
losing their fair influence in the government, and with
difficulty maintain their just rights against the incessant
efforts daily made to encroach upon them.
The
progress of the United States under our free and happy institutions
has surpassed the most sanguine hopes of the founders of
the republic. Our growth has been rapid beyond all former
example -- in numbers, in wealth, in knowledge, and all
the useful arts which contribute to the comforts and convenience
of man; and from the earliest ages of history to the present
day, there never have been 13 million people associated
together in one political body who enjoyed so much freedom
and happiness as the people of these United States. You
have no longer any cause to fear danger from abroad; your
strength and power are well known throughout the civilized
world, as well as the high and gallant bearing of your sons.
It
is from within, among yourselves, from cupidity, from corruption,
from disappointed ambition and inordinate thirst for power,
that factions will be formed and liberty endangered....
...My
own race is nearly run; advanced age and failing health
warn me that before long I must pass beyond the reach of
human events and cease to feel the vicissitudes of human
affairs. I thank God that my life has been spent in a land
of liberty and that He has given me a heart to love my country
with the affection of a son. And, filled with gratitude
for your constant and unwavering kindness, I bid you a last
and affectionate farewell.
Andrew
Jackson's Farewell Message to the American People
Source:
American Studies at
the University of Virginia
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Resources
The
Papers of Andrew Jackson>>
The
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
From
Revolution to Reconstruction: Andrew Jackson: A Brief Biography,
Department of Humanities, University
of Groningen, The Netherlands.
Jackson
v. Calhoun>>Thomas
Long, Jr., eHistory
Rachel
& Andrew Jackson: A Love Story >> Wnpt.net
The
Nullification Crisis
>>Library of Congress
Henry
Clay Speech on President Jackson's Veto of the Bank Bill, July 10,
1832>>Furman
University
Educational
Tools
The
Age of Jacksonian Democracy
(History 121:US History 1) >>Professor
Henry J. Sage, Northern Virginia Community College
Jeffersonian
and Jacksonian America, 1790-1848 (History 453)>>
Professor Edward C. Carter,
II, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
Jeffersonian
and Jacksonian Democracy, The History of the Early Republic, 1800-1845
(History 557.02) >>The
Ohio State University
Biography
of Andrew Jackson: A Man for the People
>> A&E TV.com
John
Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson >>
American History
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