Politics of Cohesion and Division
The ante-bellum time period saw the rise of some of the greatest American
political heroes and villains. This generation of leaders was responsible not to win
freedom, but to preserve it and enlarge it. Patriotism was not enough, for all the men who
led the country to disunion and Civil War claimed to be patriots. This era saw the end of
the “Virginia Dynasty” of presidents with James Monroe who still appeared in public
patriotically dressed in his Revolutionary War uniform. Monroe called the American
people “one great family with a common interest,” a phrase that captures the sentiment
behind the Era of Good Feelings. 1800 to 1824 was a period of political “harmony” in
which political parties were unpopular. Even before Monroe was gone, though, the
nation was rocked by a crisis and a depression.
Depressions were called “panics” in the 19th century. The Panic of 1819, like
each successive economic depression of that century, was the worst the country had ever
seen. This blow came as the American economy was trying to advance while a gap was
growing between the rich and the poor. On the heels of this disaster, the Missouri
territory applied for statehood as a slave state. This shock (I’ll explain in a moment) sent
the country reeling right back toward political parties again. The two-party system was
reborn and began doing what it does best, maintaining a balance and therefore unity amid
turbulence and diversity. The two parties in question were known as the Jacksonian
Democrats (heirs of the Jeffersonian Republicans) and the National Republicans, soon to
be known as Whigs. These parties barely kept the black slavery issue from tearing apart
the country before the main author of the Declaration of Independence was even dead.
The miracle that kept peace became known as the Missouri Compromise. The
debates leading to the compromise revealed that slavery, an issue from the beginning, had
merely been avoided for 45 years. Animosity over slavery, set aside by the Continental
Congress, was a ticking time bomb. How did they keep it from exploding from 1776 to
1820? The North had to recognize slaves as property of Southerners that was protected
under the Bill of Rights in that the Fifth Amendment said one’s property cannot be taken
away “without due process of law.” In a twisted sort of reciprocal “gentlemen’s
agreement,” the South had to acknowledge that slavery was evil and should eventually
disappear from American life. Neither side really held these beliefs sincerely. The antebellum period is called such because the agreement was eventually shattered, but slowly.
Deep-South government officials talked of secession and even war from the
beginning, and their belligerence encouraged a series of compromises. The North
eventually lost its patience, however, because of two of the top causes of the Civil War:
1) humanitarian reform movements stemming from the Second Great Awakening, and 2)
the rapidity and lack of organization of westward expansion. The political key to staving
off disaster was the balance between representation of slave states and free states in the
Senate. With the arrival of Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819, the count stood at
eleven slave and eleven free. One ingenious provision of the Missouri Compromise
would be that it kept the balance by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine
(carved out of Massachusetts) as a free state making the balance in the Senate twelve to
twelve.
The request of Missouri to come in as a slave state in February of 1819 was a
surprise. Because of its location, the North assumed it would follow suit with the free
states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Missouri Territory seemed to be above
slavery’s “natural boundaries” established by the climatic requirements of cotton. But 1
out of every 6 Missourians was a black slave. A key political moment in American
history happened when New York Jeffersonian Republican Representative James
Tallmadge stood up in the House and suggested barring importation of more slaves to
Missouri and emancipation of all existing Missourian slaves at the age of 25. The House
of Representatives approved, voting entirely along sectional lines and revealing the
South’s huge population handicap.
The Senate, however, passed Missouri statehood with no restrictions on slavery.
When this action occurred, the aging Thomas Jefferson said it “awakened him like a fire
bell in the night.” Slavery was not under the rug any more, and the union seemed
doomed. The disparity of the sectional views was expressed by Charles Pinckney of
South Carolina when he said, “Congress cannot exclude slavery from any territory.”
Rufus King of New York responded, “Pro-slavery laws are void—contrary to the laws of
nature and of God.” This crisis seemed an irreconcilable difference.
Abraham Lincoln later said that Pinckney was wrong. Lincoln pointed to the
precedent established by the central government under the Articles of Confederation
which banned slavery from the area around the Great Lakes in the Northwest Ordinance.
Missouri, however, was the first northern state made from the Louisiana Purchase
territories. The North assumed it would want freedom like its immediate neighbors from
the Old Northwest. Please understand that most of the opposition to slavery in Missouri
was not based on a quest for racial equality. Northerners feared harm to the free-labor
system and thus to the productivity of industry. Slaves would cause the wages of free
laborers to go down and effectively prevent industrialization. The North viewed southern
states as inferior republics, anyway, and the South feared relegation to a second-class
status in Washington, D. C.
The man who saved the day was Henry Clay. As a Representative from Kentucky
(War of 1812 War Hawk), Clay proposed the Missouri/Maine balance but also that the
rest of the Louisiana Purchase territories north of 36˚ 30΄ latitude would come in as free
states. This line formed the southern border of Missouri and should be easily
remembered by Tennesseans because our northwest border is also on this line. Later, the
northern border of Texas would sit on this line. In the debates over Clay’s proposal it
came out that the Missouri state constitution wanted to bar free blacks from settling there,
but Clay worked behind the scenes to make a compromise blocking this unconstitutional
measure. Clay may have saved the Union and was on his way to being known as the
Great Compromiser and/or the Great Pacificator. The open discussion of slavery
encouraged blacks but united whites on both sides in opposition. The Missouri
Compromise stopped a war from starting in 1820, but it also ranks as a cause of the
eventual Civil War because it polarized the country.
The Missouri Compromise and the Panic of 1819 were the destabilizing events
prior to two of the most important presidential elections in US history. The first of these,
the Election of 1824, was the first election that caused people to see that political parties
were necessary and good. The election results among four candidates from one party
were disputed, and the resulting controversy assured the return of the two-party system as
a balancing force in American politics. James Monroe followed Washington’s precedent
and bowed out after two terms. The candidates and election results are listed below:
Candidate
Henry Clay
John Q. Adams
Andrew Jackson
William H. Crawford
Percentage of
Popular Vote
14%
32%
38%
16%
Electoral
College Votes
37
84
99
41
While Andrew Jackson won the highest percentage of the popular vote and the most
Electoral College votes, the president must win a majority of Electoral votes. The election,
therefore, was sent to the House of Representatives to be decided. William Crawford had a stroke
and was withdrawn. Henry Clay was the lowest vote-getter and dropped out, but he threw his
support behind John Quincy Adams who won the House vote as a result. Clay made himself a
life-long enemy in Andrew Jackson who was furious. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina was
also mad at Clay because Calhoun wanted to be Jackson’s Vice President in order to be president
in 1828. Since Henry Clay wound up as Adams’s Secretary of State, another president-making
position, Jackson and his supporters cried, “Corrupt Bargain!” although no evidence exists that
Adams promised Clay the Cabinet slot if Clay supported Adams in the House. Jackson assumed
a deal was struck and that he had been robbed of the presidency.
The Election of 1824 has an anti-climactic ending, however, because despite the facts
that he was one of the most intelligent men to ever be president (he was fluent in seven
languages) and the most traveled American of his day, Adams proved to be an unsuccessful
president. The Presidency, itself, had deteriorated under the influence of Jefferson’s reforms and
the less iconographic natures of Madison and Monroe. Adams was unable to sway Congress to
authorize more exploration of the West or even to build an astronomical observatory. Adams’s
dream to build a national university in Washington, D. C. that would help advance the brightest
students in the land never got off the ground.
The Election of 1828 is considered the first modern election with the first modern
campaign. John Q. Adams ran again, dutifully, but only garnered 83 Electoral votes. Andrew
Jackson swept the battlefield this time with 178 Electoral votes. That’s it—only two candidates,
and Adams was the first candidate to run as a National Republican. Jackson ran for the
Democratic Republican party, and the Jeffersonian Republican party was split forever. Other
modern campaign attributes include the ballads, barbecues, parades, and posters we associate
with politicking.
Andrew Jackson, then, was a literal poster-child of American rugged individualism. An
English-hating Scots-Irishman, Jackson embodied the American Dream as a truly self-made man.
He was orphaned by the Revolutionary War in which he had fought as a soldier at the age of 13.
His iron will served him equally well as a soldier, frontier lawyer, storekeeper, and land
speculator (he once owned much of the entire state of Tennessee). He was touted as the
personification of the Unites States, and I’ll be darned if he doesn’t look like Uncle Sam (or vice
versa). His worldview included simple moral truths that made him decisive on the battlefield and
in the Oval Office.
Jackson was a planter aristocrat that had risen up out of abject poverty while acquiring a
reputation as a fierce duelist. He let his opponents fire first, a courageous tactic that nearly
always unnerved them. He could then coolly aim after they had wasted their shot. Nearly all of
these duels were fought over the reputation of his beloved wife, Rachel, who was unfortunately
not yet technically divorced from her first husband when she and Jackson were married. His ire
over aspersions cast on their relationship knew no bounds. He carried at least one bullet in his
body until the day he died. He killed one young man over a dispute about a horse race.
This man’s character was irresistible to whole segments of the American population.
Those who missed the Virginia Dynasty elected General Jackson. He was popular with
Westerners and Southern planters because he was a Westerner and a Southern planter. For future
reference, remember that 105 of Jackson’s Electoral votes came from the South. Even some leftover Federalists, however, turned to him to restore the power of the central government. But
Jackson also espoused democracy for the Common Man including the new version beyond the
traditional yeoman farmer—the urban immigrant industrial worker. Expansionists and Indianhaters embraced his record of beating and subjugating Indian tribes to clear the way for white
settlers. If you ever want to be president or help someone win the presidency, learn the lessons of
Jackson’s victory. To win you have to find a constituency consisting of as broad a segment of the
US population as possible, you have to stand for clear values, and you have to concentrate in your
campaign on the popular vote in populous states. That’s how to win.
Jackson also taught modern presidents how to wield party power. Just as John Marshall
established the power of the Supreme Court, Jackson restored the presidency to its constitutional
powers that Jefferson had stripped away. There are at least five major points to Jackson’s
presidential legacy that were established under his two terms and remain in place to this very day.
First, Jackson said, “To the victor belong the spoils.” This quote from classical literature
is the origin of what his enemies called the Spoils System. Jackson preferred the term rotation in
office. Jackson reinstated large-scale patronage by removing 1/5 of the officials of the federal
government put in by Jefferson and replacing them with his supporters. While 20% is not much,
this was the first time this was done in almost 25 years. Jackson maintained that public offices
required no special skills and that rotation would prevent the formation of a parasitic civil-servant
class. Today a new president immediately fires around 3,000 executive branch staffers and brings
in his own people.
The second legacy will seem like I am stating the obvious. Jackson was the most
aggressive man to yet be president of the United States. This inner force was manifested in the
presidency through the veto. Jackson used the veto more than all previous presidents combined.
He was jeered as “King Andrew,” but he went back to a balanced government with constitutional
checks and balances.
Jackson was provided a Cabinet by party managers and promptly ignored them. He
would come to Cabinet meetings saying, “Here’s what we’re going to do.” His real advisors were
men he had known back in Tennessee—relatives and friends. These hangers-on often gathered in
the kitchen after state dinners to tell jokes, spit tobacco, and form policy. Jackson’s enemies
therefore derided them as the Kitchen Cabinet, but you can bet every president since has had that
little trusted group to help him think.
American politics were transformed by the national party convention. In the Election of
1832, Jackson founded the Democratic Party that still exists today. The Democratic Party was
the first major party to hold a national nominating convention where the party rallied around the
General and hammered out the platform, the stand the Democrats were going to take on all the
issues. Characteristically, Jackson said this method was more “democratic” than the old caucus
system where party leaders selected the candidate in some smoke-filled room in the back of some
Washington, D. C. saloon. There have been national nominating conventions ever since.
Finally, Jackson was the first Westerner elected president. His victory reflected the
geographical shift of power away from the cultured East to embrace the frontier culture of rustic
America. The General had freed the US from British cultural oppression as surely as he had
stopped the invasion of New Orleans. Without Jackson, there might never have been a Mark
Twain, the next-most famous American of the 19th century. Next, we will see Jackson in action
as these five legacies were formed.