Hist 110
American Civilization I
Instructor: Dr. Donald R. Shaffer
Upper Iowa University
Lecture 9
The Decline of Deferential Politics

The American Revolution weakened the
power of the old colonial elite, but did
not eliminate it


They continued to dominate the political
system in the Early Republic
Many ordinary men were land owners
and could vote, but the elite controlled
them through loans and “treating”

What changed the situation was the
increasing expansion of suffrage by
eliminating property ownership
requirements in order to vote

Made possible by:

A more egalitarian version of republican
ideology

Western expansion which made it
possible for people to leave elitedominated areas and forced elites to
treat people better to keep them
Women voting in New Jersey
in the early 1800s (because of a
legal fluke that was soon closed)
Lecture 9
The Rise of Political Parties
 Some scholars believe the first party
system (Republicans vs. Federalists) was
not a real party system because the
parties themselves did not accept that
political parties were legitimate and did
not believe in the concept of a “loyal
opposition”
 The new political parties of the early 19th
century filled the void left by the decline
of deferential politics
No longer was politics dominated by a
small group of wealthy notables (planters,
merchants, etc.) who did not make their
living through politics, but by an
ambitious group of middle-class men,
coming in from law, journalism, etc., who
made politics a paying career
 Martin Van Buren epitomized this new
type of politician: a lawyer by training, he
built a political machine in New York
State and then used it to move into
national politics

Martin
Van Buren
Lecture 9
Election of 1824
 1824 saw the first national election
dominated by the new democratic style
of politics
 Three candidates who were nominal
Jeffersonian Republicans refused to
accept the nomination by the party
caucus of William Crawford, as its
presidential candidate, and challenged
him in the November election
 The three candidates overwhelmed the
ailing Crawford in the Electoral College




Andrew Jackson: 99 votes
John Quincy Adams: 84 votes
William Crawford: 41 votes
Henry Clay: 37 votes
 With no majority winner, the election
was decided in the U.S. House of
Representatives
Henry Clay, who was powerful there,
supported Adams, who prevailed
 When Adams appointed Clay as Secretary
of State, Jackson’s followers cried foul,
calling it a “corrupt bargain”

The Presidential Candidates of 1824:
Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams,
Henry Clay, and William H. Crawford
Lecture 9
John Quincy Adams as President
 A tragic episode in Adams otherwise
brilliant career

A brilliant diplomat—father of the
Monroe Doctrine
 His great talents did not include the
qualities needed to succeed as president
such charisma and public warmth
 Policies: ardent nationalist, supported
the American System, and federal
money for all internal improvements
 Assailed by his political enemies as an
aristocrat and tyrant
 Last president who tried to be the
“Patriot King”


Your textbook describes him as a
“notable”--a throwback to the era of
deferential politics
He refused to be a party leader and vainly
tried to rise above political differences
Lecture 9
Election of 1828
 If 1824 was the first national election
that demonstrated the potential of
democratic politics, then 1828 was the
election that showed how the sentiments
of ordinary Americans could be
deliberately harnessed behind a single
candidate
Martin Van Buren used his political
machine to promote the candidacy of
Andrew Jackson
 He and other Jacksonians orchestrated an
unprecedented publicity campaign
 They portrayed Jackson as a man of the
people, who would defend equal rights
and popular rule against unfair privilege

 Jackson overwhelmed Adams in the
Electoral College, winning 178 of the 261
electoral votes

Ordinary Americans felt one of them had
finally made it to the White House
Lecture 9
Andrew Jackson as President
 Andrew Jackson came into the
presidency in 1828 with a definite sense
of what he and his followers believed

Favored agrarian interests over
manufacturing

Feared concentrated economic power

Favored limited government

Favored state and local over national
authority

Generally unsympathetic to the
Benevolent Empire
 Spoils System



Jackson embraced the spoils system like
no president before him
He supported the wholesale removal of
bureaucratic appointees from the
previous administration and frequent
rotation of officeholders to insure the
maximum patronage yield
Jackson believed any reasonably
intelligent man could do just about any
government job
Cartoon lampooning Jackson’s
support of the spoils system
Lecture 9
Jackson’s Political Wars
 Nullification Crisis
The South bitterly opposed the Tariff of
1828, especially South Carolina where it
was called the “Tariff of Abominations”
 Insufficient tariff reductions in the new
1832 law led South Carolina to try to
nullify both laws in their state
 Jackson threatened military action to
enforce the tariff, but it never happened
because Henry Clay intervened with a
compromise tariff

 Bank War
The other great political battle of
Jackson’s presidency was over whether to
recharter the 2nd Bank of United States
 Jackson passionately opposed the
recharter, especially when the Bank’s
allies in Congress pushed the issue early
in 1832 hoping Jackson would not oppose
them in an election year
 Jackson vetoed the recharter bill, claiming
Congress had no authority to issue a
charter and attacking the bank as a
bastion of economic privilege
 The public rallied to Jackson and after reelection he pulled federal deposits out of
the 2nd Bank of the United States into
pro-Jackson state banks—”pet banks”

Cartoon celebrating Jackson’s
attack on the Second Bank
of the United States
Lecture 9
The Trials of Martin Van Buren

Martin Van Buren became Vice
President in Jackson’s second term
when John C. Calhoun resigned during
the Nullification Crisis


As Vice President and Jackson’s closest
political ally, he was Jackson’s logical
successor and won election in 1836
Van Buren’s presidency was jinxed from
the start


The Panic of 1837 erupted just before
Van Buren’s inauguration and fairly or
unfairly he received the blame

Democratic monetary and fiscal
policy was arguably to blame for
panic and for making it worse

Independent Treasury Act: withdrew
federal money from the banking
system—pleasing hard money
Democrats but hurting the economy
While Van Buren avoided war with
Mexico his continuation of Jackson’s
Indian removal policy resulted in the
longest and costliest Indian War in
American history—the 2nd Seminole War
Cartoon contemplating a man’s
ruin from the Panic of 1837
Lecture 9
The Whigs
 Not all Americans agreed with the
Jacksonian’s program
Whigs coalesced around opponents of
Andrew Jackson and his policies
 They called themselves Whigs (after the
anti-monarchical English party of the 18th
century) to emphasize what they saw as
Jackson’s aggressive pursuit of executive
power
 The rise of the Whigs completed the
emergence of the first true party system
in U.S.
 Both party’s opposed each other but did
see the opposition as illegitimate

 Whig’s political positions





Favored activist federal government
Favored federal support for all internal
improvements
Favored a national bank
Favored a protective tariff
Closely associated with moral reform
movements of the Benevolent Empire
Cartoon attacking Jackson’s
heavy-hand political style
Lecture 9
Labor and the Panic of 1837
 By the 1830s, there existed a politicallyoriented labor movement
They sought to spread the prosperity of
the Industrial Revolution to workers
 They wanted to abolish private banks,
chartered monopolies, and debtor’s
prisons
 They wanted a society without dependent
workers, in which men worked for
themselves and owned their own means
of production

 These parties could not compete with
the Democratic Party (i.e., Jacksonians),
as most workers saw the Democrats,
with their egalitarian rhetoric, as more
able to achieve some of their goals
The workingmen’s parties also were
undone by the courts that generally were
hostile to organized labor, declaring labor
unions as criminal conspiracies
 The Panic of 1837 dealt them a deathblow
by taking away what little bargaining
power labor had, as workingmen faced
mass unemployment

Lemuel Shaw, the Massachusetts
judge who gave organized labor
one of its few legal victories in
Commonwealth v. Hunt (1842) by
declaring labor unions in the state
were not criminal conspiracies
Lecture 9
Election of 1840
 With the Democrats and Van Buren
getting the blame for the Panic of 1837,
1840 looked to be a promising election
year for the Whigs
 They adopted the tactics and egalitarian
rhetoric of the Democrats, nominating a
popular war hero, William Henry
Harrison
The Whigs whipped up enthusiasm for
the candidate with songfests, parades,
and mass meetings
 They attacked Van Buren as an aristocrat,
with aristocratic tastes
 The Whigs also incorrectly portrayed
Harrison as a self made man happy to live
in a log cabin and drink hard cider, when
he was really more of an aristocrat than
Van Buren having been born and grown
up in a mansi0n

 Harrison easily defeated Van Buren, but
died a month after taking office and his
successor, John Tyler, a former
Democrat, often supported Democratic
policy goals
William
Henry
Harrison