THE AGE OF JACKSON
TENSION BETWEEN ADAMS AND
JACKSON
• Election 1824 – Jackson won the popular vote but
lacked the majority of electoral votes to take office.
• The House of representatives decided the outcome,
since no candidate had received a majority of the
votes of the Electoral College.
TENSIONS BETWEEN ADAMS &
JACKSON
• Adams was elected president by a majority of the
states representatives in the House.
• Jacksonians claimed Adams has struck a corrupt
bargain.
• The Jacksonians withdrew from the Republican
Party to form the Democratic Republican Party
(today’s Democratic Party)
DEMOCRACY & CITIZENSHIP
• Over the next 4 years, Jacksonians did what ever
they could to sabotage Adam’s polices.
• Aware that many voters distrusted the national
bank and disliked tariffs, Jacksonians opposed both.
DEMOCRACY & CITIZENSHIP
• During Adam’s presidency – requirements for voting
eased.
• 1824 - 350,000 males voted
• 1828 – three times the amount in 1824 voted, and
their votes helped Andrew Jackson.
JACKSON’S NEW PRESIDENTIAL
STYLE
• 1828 election – Jackson characterized Adams as an
intellectual elitist, and himself as a man of humble
origins.
• Jackson won by a landslide.
• Record numbers of people came to Washington to
see “Old Hickory” inaugurated.
JACKSON’S SPOILS SYSTEM
• In order to give common people a chance to
participant in government, his appointees to
federal jobs would serve a maximum of four-year
terms.
• This policy of “rotation in office” enabled Jackson
to give away huge numbers of jobs to friends and
political allies.
JACKSON’S SPOILS SYSTEM
• Jackson’s administration essentially practiced the
spoils system of government.
• Saying- “To the victor belong the spoils of the
enemy.”
• In the Spoils System, incoming officials throw out
former appointees and replace them with their own
friends.
REMOVAL OF NATIVE AMERICANS
• Five Civilized Tribes – Cherokees, Choctaw,
Seminole, Creek, and Chickasaw.
• Cherokee – created their own formal government.
(just like the U.S.)
• George Guess (Sequoya) – devised an alphabet,
the tribe published it’s own bilingual newspaper.
INDIAN REMOVAL ACT OF 1830
• Federal govt. provided funds to negotiate treaties
that would force the Native Americans to move
west.
• 90 treaties were signed.
• Trail of Tears – 1830, Jackson forced the Choctaw to
move from Mississippi.
• 1831, he forced the Sauk and Fox from theirs lands
in Illinois and Missouri.
TRAIL OF TEARS
• 1832, he forced the Chickasaw to leave their lands
in Alabama and Mississippi.
• Cherokee Nation tried to win just treatment through
the U.S. legal system.
• Chief Justice John Marshall – refused to rule
because in his view the Cherokee had no federal
standing.
• It was neither a foreign nation nor a state, but rather
a “domestic dependent nation.”
TRAIL OF TEARS
• Cherokees teamed up with Samuel Austin
Worchester.
• A missionary who had been jailed for teaching
Indians without a state license.
• They knew the court would have to recognize a
citizen’s right to be heard.
• The court ruled on Worcester v. Georgia in 1832.
WORCHESTER V. GEORGIA
• Won all the rights that were due to them.
• The court recognized the Cherokee Nation as a
distinct political community whose people Georgia
was not entitled to regulate by law and whose
lands Georgia was not entitled to invade.
• Jackson – “John Marshall had made his decision;
now let him enforce it.”
THE TREATY OF ECHOTA
• 1835 – gave the last 8 million acres of Cherokee
land to the federal government in exchange for 5
million and land in Oklahoma.
• This marked the beginning of the Cherokee exodus.
• 1838 – nearly 20,000 Cherokee still remained in the
East, Pres. Martin Van Buren ordered their forced
removal.
TRAIL OF TEARS
• October – November 1838, 800 mile trip.
• As winter came on, more and more Indians died.
• Government officials stole their money, outlaws
made off with their livestock.
• Cherokee buried more than a quarter of their
people along the trail of tears.
• They ended up on land far inferior to that which
they had been forced to leave.
JOHN C. CALHOUN
• Jackson’s vice-president – called the 1828 tariff a
“Tariff of Abominations.”
• “A disgusting and loathsome tariff.”
• High tariff reduced British exports to America, Britain
bought less cotton.
• With the decline of British goods, the South had to
buy more expensive Northern manufactured goods.
HAYNE AND WEBSTER DEBATE
STATES’ RIGHTS
• January 1830 – Tariff question & the underlying
states’ right issue.
• Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina debates
Senator Daniel Webster of Massachusetts.
• Hayne – “The measures of the federal
government…will soon involve the whole South in
irretrievable ruin.”
HAYNE AND WEBSTER DEBATE
STATES’ RIGHTS
• Webster – “the union was for the people, made by
the people, and answerable to the people.”
• Once the debate ended the people wanted to
hear Pres. Jackson’s position.
• “Our union: it must and shall be preserved.”
SOUTH CAROLINA REBELS
• 1832 – South Carolina declares the tariffs of 1828 &
1832 “unauthorized by the Constitution” and “null,
void, and no law.”
• They threatened to secede or withdraw from the
Union, if customs officials tried to collect taxes.
• Jackson was furious – he threatened to hang
Calhoun and march federal troops into South
Carolina to enforce the tariff.
FORCE BILL
• Jackson urges Congress to pass the Force Bill in
1833, to allow the federal govt. to use army or navy
against South Carolina if state authorities resisted
paying proper duties.
• Henry Clay – forged a compromise in 1833 between
all parties.
• This would gradually lower duties over a ten-year
period.
JACKSON ATTACKS THE
NATIONAL BANK (BUS)
• 1832 – vetoed a bill to recharter it.
• In Jackson’s eyes – the national bank symbolized
Eastern wealth and power.
• He regarded the national bank as an agent of the
wealthy, whose members cared nothing for
Jackson’s common people.
PET BANKS
• 1832 – Jackson told Martin Van Buren “The Bank is
trying to kill me, but I will kill it.”
• Pressured the Sec. of Treasury to withdraw all govt.
deposits and place them in certain state banks
called “pet banks.”
• Sec. of Treasury refused and Jackson replaced him.
WHIG PARTY
• 1834 – the discontented, including Henry Clay and
Daniel Webster channeled their frustrations into
action, they formed a new political party called the
Whig party.
• Whigs were a group in Britain that tried to limit royal
power, and Whig had come to mean anyone
opposed to an excessively powerful chief
executive.
PANIC OF 1837
• Bank closings and the collapse of the credit system
cost many people their savings, bankrupted
hundreds of businesses, and put more than a third
of the population out of work.
HARRISON AND TYLER
• 1841 – Harrison won election, a month later
dies of pneumonia.
• John Tyler - (vice-president) becomes
president.
• Legacy of two parties:
Jacksonian Democrats or
Whigs, these parties held
center stage from
1830s -1850s.