Theme 7 The Age of Jackson
The election of Andrew Jackson in 1828 came to symbolize
the emergence of a new democratic spirit: an “age of
the common man.” Although the Democrats favored
limited national gov’t, Jackson forcefully responded to
South Carolina’s defiance over the collection of tariffs.
The exercise of assertive executive power is best
illustrated by Jackson’s veto of rechartering of the
national bank and his “war” against the “monopoly.” The
removal of Indian tribes from the Southeast to lands west
of the Mississippi was vigorously pursued. A new Whig
Party emerged in opposition to “King Andrew I.”
Essential Question:
Champion of
the
“Common Man”?
OR
“King”
Andrew?
Voting Requirements
in the Early 19c
Voter Turnout: 1820 - 1860
Why Increased Democratization?
3
White male suffrage increased
3
Party nominating committees.
3
Voters chose their state’s slate of Presidential electors.
3
Spoils system.
3
Rise of Third Parties.
3
Popular campaigning (parades, rallies, floats, etc.)
3
Two-party system returned in the 1832 election:
3
Dem-Reps à Natl. Reps.(1828) à Whigs
(1832) à Republicans (1854)
3
Democrats (1828)
Jackson’s First
Hermitage Residence
First Known Painting
of Jackson, 1815
General Jackson
During the Seminole Wars
The “Common Man’s”
Presidential Candidate
Jackson’s Opponents in 1824
Henry Clay
[KY]
John Quincy Adams
[MA]
William H. Crawford
[GA]
John C. Calhoun
[SC]
Results of the 1824 Election
A “Corrupt
Bargain?”
The Election of 1824:
The “Corrupt Bargain”
Popular Vote
Electoral
Vote
Andrew
Jackson
43%
99
J.Q. Adams
31%
32
William
Crawford
13%
41
Henry Clay
13%
37
Candidate
Theme 40: Political Realignments
Overview: The 1820s saw a widening of popular participation in politics and realignment of political parties
The Federalist Party: Virtually ceased to exist after 1816 on the national level
Suffrage (the vote): Was gradually being expanded among adult white males as the property requirement was
abandoned
• Voter reform came first in the Western states, last in the South, and only in Rhode Island was it accompanied by any
violence (Dorr Rebellion, 1843)
• The vote of the people replaced state legislatures in selecting presidential electors
Election of 1824: The Republicans failed to agree on one nominee for president, and four factional candidates
emerged. A Congressional caucus chose William Crawford (the last time this system was used); Henry Clay of
Kentucky won support from Western state legislatures; Secretary of State John Quincy Adams was supported by
New England; and Andrew Jackson of Tennessee enjoyed broad national support as a war hero. John C. Calhoun
withdrew and became the Vice Presidential candidate.
• Jackson received the most popular votes but no one received an electoral college majority
• As provided by the 12th Amendment, the choice (from the top 3 candidates) went to the House of Representatives
• With the support of Clay, Adams received a majority of state votes in the House. Jackson supporters denounced
the supposed “corrupt bargain” as Clay was then named Secretary of State
President John Quincy Adams: Lacking in tact and in willingness to compromise, he faced criticism from
Jacksonians throughout his term (his foes controlled Congress after the 1826 elections)
• A nationalist, Adams supported internal improvements (roads and canals) at federal expense
• Adams expressed concern for the rights of Native Americans
• Congress hampered the administration’s plan to attend a Pan-American Conference in Panama, and Adams failed
to persuade Britain to reopen its West Indies possession to U.S. trade
Rachel Jackson
Final Divorce Decree
Jackson in Mourning for His Wife
1828 Election Results
The Center of Population in the
Country Moves WEST
The New “Jackson Coalition”
3
The Planter Elite in the
South
3
People on the Frontier
3
State Politicians – spoils
system
3
Immigrants in the cities.
Jackson’s Faith
in the “Common Man”
3
Intense distrust of Eastern
“establishment,” monopolies, &
special privilege.
3
His heart & soul was with the
“plain folk.”
3
Belief that the common man was
capable of uncommon
achievements.
The Reign of “King Mob”
Andrew Jackson as President
The “Peggy Eaton Affair”
The Webster-Hayne Debate
Sen. Daniel
Webster
[MA]
Sen. Robert
Hayne
[SC]
1830
Webster:
Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable. "made for the people, made by the
people, and answerable to the people,"
Jackson:
Our Federal Union—it must be
preserved.
Calhoun:
The Union, next to our liberty,
most dear.
1832 Tariff Conflict
3
1828 --> “Tariff of
Abomination”
3
1832 --> new tariff
3
South Carolina’s reaction?
3
Jackson’s response?
3
Clay’s “Compromise”
Tariff?
Tariff of Abominations 1828
Tariff of 1828: In an attempt to embarrass President Adams, the
Jacksonians introduced the Tariff of 1828.
•
Northern states, which were increasingly industrialized, voted for
high rates
•
Southern members of Congress, reflecting their states’ growing
reliance on cotton and purchase of manufactured goods, voted
against the bill
•
The reversal of positions by Daniel Webster and John C Calhoun
reflected economic changes in their sections of the nation
•
Congress passed the “Tariff of Abominations” and President
Adams signed it
Opposition: South Carolina led the sectional opposition to higher
tariffs
•
Vice President John C Calhoun anonymously wrote “The South
Carolina Exposition and Protest,” extolling the principle of state
sovereignty.
•
The pamphlet branded the tariff unconstitutional and
recommended nullification of the laws by states that opposed it
•
In his theory of the concurrent majority (a sectional veto power
for the minority South), Calhoun sought to protect the interest of a
minority South against majority tyranny
•
No other states joined South Carolina’s protest, and a nullification
vote failed in the legislature
Tariffs
Webster-Hayne Debate
Webster-Hayne debate 1830: Argument
over public land policies developed into a
classic debate between Massachusetts and
South Carolina senators over the nature of
the Union.
• Robert Hayne (South Carolina) defended
state sovereignty and the doctrine of
nullification
• Daniel Webster (Massachusetts) replied that
he union was “one and inseparable” and that
nullification was treasonable.
Tariff of 1832
Tariff of 1832: Reduced rates by 10% but still protective
•
A special South Carolina convention declared the tariff null and
void in that state and threatened secession (Ordinance of
Nullification)
•
President Jackson responded with a ringing proclamation
(“Disunion by armed force is treason”) and threatened to send a
military force to enforce tariff collections
•
Calhoun resigned as vice president to become South Carolina’s
spokesman in the Senate
•
Other Southern states refused to support nullification or
secession
•
Congress passed a “force bill” approving presidential military
action if necessary
•
Henry Clay’s Compromise on Tariff (for gradual rate reduction)
was passed (1833) South Carolina rescinded its nullification
ordinance, and the crisis subsided.
Tariffs
Federalism: The proper balance of national and state
power and authority was the central issue of the tariff
controversy.
• Northern industrial development was aided by
higher, protective tariffs
• Northern economic and population growth appeared
to threaten the South’s economic, political, and social
systems
• The doctrine of nullification restated states rights
theory
• Possible secession and disunion were averted by
compromise
Native American Lands
1500
Hunter
gatherer
Agriculture
Fishing
A Buffer Zone
•
Thomas Jefferson proposed the
creation of a buffer zone between
U.S. and European holdings, to be
inhabited by eastern American
Indians.
The Cherokees
•
•
•
•
•
Historically, Cherokees occupied lands
in several southeastern states.
As European settlers arrived, Cherokees
traded and intermarried with them.
They began to adopt European customs
and gradually turned to an agricultural
economy, while being pressured to give
up traditional homelands.
Between 1721 and 1819, over 90 percent
of their lands were ceded to others.
By the 1820s, Sequoyah's syllabary
brought literacy and a formal governing
system with a written constitution.
Why remove the Cherokee
from their lands?
• In 1830--the same year the Indian
Removal Act was passed--gold was
found on Cherokee lands.
• Georgia held lotteries to give
Cherokee land and gold rights to
whites.
• Cherokees were not allowed to
conduct tribal business, contract,
testify in courts against whites, or
mine for gold.
History of the Indian Removal
• Once an ally of the Cherokees, President
Andrew Jackson authorized the Indian
Removal Act of 1830, following the
recommendation of President James
Monroe in his final address to Congress in
1825.
• Jackson sanctioned an attitude that had
persisted for many years among many
white immigrants.
• Even Thomas Jefferson, who often cited
the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois
Confederacy as the model for the U.S.
Constitution, supported Indian Removal as
early as 1802.
Jackson’s Plan
• Between 1816 and 1840, tribes
located between the original states
and the Mississippi River, including
Cherokees, Chickasaws, Choctaws,
Creeks, and Seminoles, signed more
than 40 treaties ceding their lands to
the U.S.
• In his 1829 inaugural address,
President Andrew Jackson set a
policy to relocate eastern Indians.
• In 1830 it was endorsed, when
Congress passed the Indian Removal
Act to force those remaining to move
west of the Mississippi.
•
President
Andrew
Jackson
Challenging the Court’s Power
1830 à Indian Removal Act
3
The Cherokees
successfully challenged
Georgia in the U.S. Supreme
Court.
3
Cherokee Nation v. GA
(1831) “domestic dependent
nation”
3
President Jackson, when
hearing of the Court's
decision, reportedly said,
"[Chief Justice] John
Marshall has made his
decision; let him enforce it
now if he can.
Opposition to Removal
• The displacement of native people was not
wanting for eloquent opposition.
• Senators Daniel Webster and Henry Clay
spoke out against removal.
• Reverend Samuel Worcester, missionary to
the Cherokees, challenged Georgia's
attempt to extinguish Indian title to land in
the state, winning the case before the
Supreme Court.
• Worcester v. GA (1832)
The Supreme Court renders
its decisions
• Worcester vs. Georgia, 1832, and Cherokee
Nation vs. Georgia, 1831, are considered the two
most influential decisions in Indian law.
• In effect, the opinions challenged the
constitutionality of the Removal Act and the US.
Government precedent for unapplied Indian-federal
law was established by Jackson's defiant
enforcement of the removal.
Between 1830 and 1850, about 100,000
American Indians living between Michigan,
Louisiana, and Florida moved west after the
U.S. government coerced treaties or used
the U.S. Army against those resisting.
Many were treated brutally. An estimated
3,500 Creeks died in Alabama and on their
westward journey. Some were transported
in chains.
Native American lands in
Southeastern US
• The U.S. Government used
the Treaty of New Echota in
1835 to justify the removal.
• The treaty, signed by about
100 Cherokees and known
as the Treaty Party,
relinquished all lands east of
the Mississippi River in
exchange for land in Indian
Territory and the promise of
money, livestock, and
various provisions and tools.
Effects on the Cherokee
Nation
• When the pro-removal Cherokee leaders
signed that treaty, they also signed their
own death warrants.
• The Cherokee National Council earlier
had passed a law that called for the
death penalty for anyone who agreed to
give up tribal land.
• The signing and the removal led to
bitter factionalism and the deaths of
most of the Treaty Party leaders in
Indian Territory
"I would sooner be honestly
damned than hypocritically
immortalized"
Davy Crockett
His political career destroyed
because he supported the
Cherokee, he left Washington,
D.C. and headed west to Texas.
Native Opposition
• Opposition to the removal was led by
Chief John Ross, a mixed-blood of
Scottish and one-eighth Cherokee
descent.
• The Ross party and most Cherokees
opposed the New Echota Treaty, but
Georgia and the U.S. Government
prevailed and used it as justification to
force almost all of the 17,000
Cherokees from the southeastern
homelands.
The Forceful Removal
• Under orders from President Jackson, the
U.S. Army began enforcement of the
Removal Act.
• The work was subcontracted to other
providers. Food disappeared. Corruption
abounded.
• Around 3,000 Cherokees were rounded up in
the summer of 1838 and loaded onto boats
that traveled the Tennessee, Ohio,
Mississippi, and Arkansas Rivers into Indian
Territory.
• Many were held in prison camps awaiting
their fate.
• In the winter of 1838-39, 14,000 were
marched 1,200 miles through Tennessee,
Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas
into rugged Indian Territory.
Indian Removal
• An estimated 4,000 died from
hunger, exposure and disease. The
journey became an eternal memory
as the "trail where they cried" for
the Cherokees and other removed
tribes. Today it is remembered as
the Trail of Tears
Those who remained . . .
• Those who were able to hide in the
mountains of North Carolina or who had
agreed to exchange Cherokee citizenship for
U.S. citizenship later emerged as the Eastern
Band of Cherokee Indians of Cherokee, N.C.
• The descendants of the survivors of the Trail
of Tears comprise today's Cherokee Nation
with membership of more than 165,000
"The Trail of Tears"
Painting by Robert Lindneux in the Woolaroc Museum,
Bartlesville, Oklahoma
Used with permission.
Jackson’s Professed “Love” for
Native Americans
Jackson’s Use of Federal Power
VETO
1830 à Maysville Road project
in KY [state of his
political rival, Henry
Clay]
The National Bank Debate
Nicholas
Biddle
President
Jackson
Biddle’s Bank: largely owned by foreign “Lords, Dukes,and Ladies,”
An ugly emblem of corruption he’d been elected to stop. He was disgusted with
Congressmen and Senators who shamelessly took cash from corporations and people
like Biddle: “I weep for the liberty of my country.”
Presidential Courage by Michael Beschloss
http://uk.geocities.com/haywardlass/_wp_generated/wpd18e0712.jpg
http://loc.harpweek.com/LCPoliticalCartoons/Disk3/5w/3a05364v5w.jpg
Opposition to the 2nd B.U.S.
“Soft”
(paper) $
3
3
state bankers felt
it restrained their
banks from issuing
bank notes freely.
supported rapid
economic growth
& speculation.
“Hard”
(specie) $
3
3
3
felt that coin was
the only safe
currency.
didn’t like any bank
that issued bank
notes.
suspicious of
expansion &
speculation.
Biddle, providing lavish loans
to Congress, felt confident the country could not
survive without his bank.
He offered to see the debt paid off but lurking
within this deal was that Jackson would have to
endorse a new charter for the Bank.
Without that commitment the country, Biddle
warned, would be consumed by, “confusion,
anxiety, and speculation.”
Jackson was no gullible backswoodsman.
He called Biddle to the White House….
Jackson was sensitive to those
who thought him too
rough-hewn
The “Monster” Is Destroyed!
3
Henry Clay introduces rechartering the BUS
earlier than necessary; political issue
3
1832 à Jackson vetoed the extension of the
2nd National Bank of the United States.
3
Jackson’s veto of the Bank recharter is one
one the most important vetoes in American
history.
3
Significance: Estb. vast new authority for
himself and future Presidents. Since G.
Washington vetoes were used as sanctions
against bills deemed unconstitutional.
Jackson’s action empowered Presidents to
stop measures they simply didn’t like.
The “Monster” Is Destroyed!
3
Jackson’s veto: This came close to declaring
class war and gave no hint of economic
dangers approaching if there wasn’t some
type of substitute financial institution
3
Jackson had wisely addressed the American
soul.
3
The Pittsburg Manufacturer said, “With one
voice, with one arm, mighty and just as that
which placed the Hero of New Orleans in the
Presidential Chair, let us rise in our might and
sustain his veto on this vampire of our
country’s prosperity” (Beschloss, Presidential Courage)
On the Senate floor, Daniel Webster of
Massachusetts rose to defy Jackson’s veto
“I warn that the “despotic” President is
launching “experiments” that will
compel a “complete change in our
gov’t” with the President seizing he
“power of the originating laws.”
If that happens, the Constitution will
not survive to “its fiftieth year!”
Good thing Americans didn’t
know that Webster had
just asked Biddle for a
$12,000 loan.
Beschloss, Presidential Courage
http://www.seacoastsearch.com/nhlinks/people/danielwebster/res/danielwebster1.jpeg
The Downfall of “Mother Bank”
Neither the House nor the Senate could muster the 2/3rd required
votes to override the President’s veto. The Bank was dead and an
election loomed.
The “Monster” Is Destroyed!
3
Jackson vs. Henry Clay for Election of 1832
3
Biddle spent $2.3 million in the press to topple
the President
3
Pro-Clay newspapers declare; “The
Constitution is gone! It is a dead letter, and the
will of a DICTATOR is the Supreme Law!”
3
Jackson and his running mate Martin Van
Buren saw “Hickory Clubs” organized across
the nation with claims to “Stand by Our Hero”
to defeat “Emperor Nicholas”
3
1832
Jackson wins re-elections
1832 Election Results
The “Monster” Is Destroyed!
3
Biddle isn’t giving up yet.
3
“pet banks” - Jackson decides to cripple Biddle’s Bank
by removing huge federal deposits held there. He
places them in favored state banks
3
His Sec. of Treasury Wm Duane refused - Jackson fired
him! Senate approved hiring of cabinet positions but
obviously they didn’t have to approve dismissals! King
Jackson enhances power of presidency
3
Biddle calls in loans - financial chaos.
3
People complain to Jackson. He sends them to Biddle
3
1834 HENRY CLAY organizes Senators against “King
Andrew the First”. This new party is called the Whigs =
cover for bald Federalism
An 1832 Cartoon:
“King
Andrew”?
The “Monster” Is Destroyed!
3 1836
à the charter expired.
3 1841
à the bank went
bankrupt!
The Specie Circular (1836)
3 “wildcat banks.”
3 buy future federal
land only with gold or
silver.
3 Jackson’s goal?
Results of the Specie Circular
$ Banknotes loose their value.
$ Land sales plummeted.
$ Credit not available.
$ Businesses began to fail.
$ Unemployment rose.
The Panic of 1837!
The 1836 Election Results
Martin Van Buren
“Old Kinderhook”
[O. K.]
The Panic of 1837 Spreads Quickly!
Andrew Jackson in Retirement
Jackson
• Watching Van Buren being
sworn in as president, Jackson
told a reporter, that his finest act
as President had been to
vanquish Biddle’s Bank. With
humor, he added a wish that he
had also shot Henry Clay
Beschloss, Presidential Courage
Photo of Andrew Jackson in 1844
(one year before his death)
Jackson took on the presidency largely
ignorant of economics and took little time
to learn. Too often he was ruled not by
reason but by vindictiveness and fight.
By destroying Biddle’s Bank
without some accountable replacement,
he fostered the American idea that the
country did not need a central bank to
ensure sound currency.
1767 - 1845
Through 80 years of boom and bust, until Congress estb. the Federal
Reserve in 1913, millions of Americans suffered.
The Founders worried about demagoguery, but Jackson did not
hesitate, distorting complex banking issues into a stark public choice
between rich and poor.
But his audacity gave later Presidents more power. If he had not
broadened the expectations of what the President owed the people and
if he had not expanded the power of the veto, the American future would
have been very different
Beschloss, Presidential Courage