Jacksonian Democracy
1. What have historians often called the period in American history from 1824 to 1850?
2. For whom was this period named?
3. What did the Age of Jackson witness?
4. When was Andrew Jackson elected president of the United States?
5. What group participated in the electoral process for the first time during the Age of
Jackson?
6. Before the Age of Jackson, with whose rule had the mass of American people been
content?
7. What type of government is an aristocracy?
8. What is an aristocrat?
9. Before the 1828 election, with whom had the majority of the American people been
satisfied with selecting their president?
10. Why was the distinction between "aristocrat" and common man disappearing by the
mid-1820s?
11. Define suffrage.
12. Define universal white manhood suffrage.
13. What two types of voting requirements did universal white manhood suffrage
eliminate?
14. During the Jacksonian period, what action did many of the older states take regarding
voter qualifications?
15. What new method of choosing presidential candidates was first used during the 1828
election?
16. What is a national convention?
17. To what political party did Andrew Jackson belong?
18. What did President Jackson use to reward his political supporters?
19. What was the spoils system?
20. What was the major criticism of the spoils system?
21. What type of reform did Jackson consider the spoils system?
22. What did Jackson call the spoils system, and why did Jackson believe it benefited a
democracy like the United States?
23. How else did Andrew Jackson champion democracy?
24. Why did Jackson distrust the Bank of the United States?
25. Who made up the Eastern elite?
26. What action did President Jackson take in 1832 on the bill to recharter the BUS?
27. What is a presidential veto?
28. How did President Jackson's veto of the bank recharter bill differ from all previous
presidential vetoes?
29. What right did Jackson claim for the president in his message vetoing recharter of the
Second BUS?
30. How did Andrew Jackson's bank veto make the presidential veto part of the
legislative or lawmaking process?
31. What precedent was set by President Jackson's bank veto?
32. What became the central issue in the presidential election of 1832?
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33. Who ran against President Jackson in the 1832 election, and what was this candidate's
political party?
34. What was Henry Clay's position on the Second Bank of the United States?
35. To what did the National Republican Party change its name?
36. Who won an overwhelming victory in the 1832 presidential election?
37. How did President Jackson interpret his overwhelming victory in the 1832
presidential election?
38. What did Jackson make as a major goal of his second term as president?
39. What action did President Jackson take against the BUS?
40. How did Jackson's reelection affect the BUS?
41. What resulted from President Jackson's decision to withdraw all federal funds from
the BUS?
42. What was the Panic of 1837?
43. What group of Americans was particularly hurt by the reforms of Jacksonian
democracy?
44. As white Americans moved westward during the Jacksonian period, what two things
happened to the American Indians?
45. What president proposed the Indian Removal Act in 1830?
46. What did the Indian Removal Act do?
47. What was the Trail of Tears?
48. What happened to nearly one-fourth of the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears?
49. What happened to other Indians tribes during the Jacksonian period?
50. What happened to American Indians throughout the rest of the 19th century?
51. Name another reform movement that developed during the Jacksonian period?
52. What was the main goal of the women’s rights movement?
53. When and where did the women’s rights movement begin?
54. What right for women did the Seneca Falls Declaration support?
55. Who were two of the most important leaders of the women’s suffrage movement?
56. Did the women’s suffrage movement continue after the Civil War?
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