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Democracy in Ameica
\THERE HISTORIANS DISAGREE
Jacksonian Democraql
Andrew Jackson was not only one of the most
powerful political figures of the nineteenth century; he also became the symbol of a po.litical philosophy and a social spirit that seemed to be
gaining strength in America in the 1820s and
1830s. Historians have taken a particular interest,
therefore, both in Jackson and in the set of social
and political ideas he has come to represent. And
they have disagreed markedly both about the man
himself and about the social and ideological move:Jacksonian
ment that has come to be known as
Democracy." As with many other issuei on which
historians differ, their views ofJackson have often
reflected the political climate of their own day.
In the late nineteenth century, when the historical profession was dominated by aristocratic
Easterners with Y/higgish political views, studies
of Jackson were largely hostile. Conservative biographers such as James Parton (L,-f, oJ Anilrew
Jackson, 1860) denounced theJacksonians as "barbarians" who had turned government over to the
"rabble." By embracing ihe spoils system, such
historians argued, Jackson had paved the way for
the rampant corruption in government of later
years.
By destroying the Bank of the
States, he had struck a heavy
United
blow against Amer-
ican financial stability.
By the early twentieth century, the writing of
history, and with it the historical view of theJacksonians, had begun to experience an important
transformation. (Jnder the influence of Frederick
Jackson Turner, historians began to emphasize the
role of the West in American life and to see in the
frontier a healthy, democratic influence on the nation. Turner and his disciples, most of them Westerners or Southerners themselves, rejected the
view of Whiggish historians that the Jacksonians
had been ill-bred rabble. Instead, they argued,
Democrats of Jackson's time had been freedomloving frontiersmen of the V/est, challenging the
conservative aristocracy of the East, which was
attempting to restrict opportunity. Jackson himself, they claimed, was much like the progressives
of their own time: a true democrat who strove to
make government responsive to the will of the
people rather than to the desires of special interests. Dissenters such as Thomas P. Abernethy
(From Frontier to Plantation in Tennessee, 1932) argued that Jackson had himself been a frontier arisiocrat andhad opposed the democratic trend in his
own state. For the most part, however, the view
of Jacksonianism as "frontier democracy" (as
Tuiner had argued in his famous essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History,"
1893) prevailed through the first half of the twentieth century.
A new era in Jacksonian scholarship began in
1945 with the publication of the celebrated study
by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age ofJackson.
Like Turner and others, Schlesinger admiredJackson for bringing a healthy democratic influence to
American politi.r and saw the Jacksonian era as
one of ,t.idily expanding political opportunity
He did not, however, share the view of earli
historians that the roots ofJacksonianism lay in
'West.
lnstead, Schlesinger claimed, the conflict between Democrats and Wt igt was a conflict "not of
sections, but of classes." Jacksonian Democracy
was an effbrt "to control the power of the capitalist groups, mainly Eastern, for the benefit of noncapitalist groups, farmers and laboring men, East,
Wist, and South." Emphasizing the role of the
urban working classes in the Jacksonian coalition,
he saw in the 1830s an early version of modern
reform efforts to "restrain the power of the busi-
community."
Other historians have accepted Schlesinger's
view that classes were more irirportant thanlections, but they have disagreed-with him about
which class Jackson represented. Richard Hofness
stadter's influential essay in The American Political
Tradition (1948) portrayed Jackson as the spokesman of rising entrepreneurs-aspiring businessmen who saw the road to opportunity blocked by
the monopolistic power of thi Eastern aristocracy.
Thus theJacksonians were opposed to special priv-
Democracy in
America
299
\rHERE HISTORIANS DISAGREE
ileges only
to the extent those privileges blocked
their own road to success. They were less sympa-
thetic to the aspirations of those below themworkers and small farmers. Bray Hammond, in
Banks and Politics in America from the Reuolution to
the Ciuil War (1,957), argued similarly that theJacksonian cause was "one of enterpriser against capitalist, of banker against regulation, and of Wall
Street against Chestnut"-that is, of the rising
bankers of New York City against the established
bankers of the Philadelphia-based Bank of the
United States.
Still another view ofJacksonianism emerged in
the 1950s from historians concerned with the ideological origins of the movement. Marvin Meyers,
in The Jacksonian Persuasion (1957), emphasized the
appeal of the Jeffersonian heritage to the Jacksonians. Jackson and his followers looked with mistrust on the new industrial society emerging
^-ound them and yearned instead for a restoration
the agrarian, republican virtues of an earlier
"rrrne. In destroying the Bank, limiting federal economic activities, and emphasizing states' rights,
they were attempting to restore a simpler, more
decentralized world. Ironically, their actions contributed instead to the expansion of unregulated
capitalism.
Lee Benson, in The Concept ofJacksonian Democracy (7961), a study of political parties in New
York, used new quantitative techniques to challenge virtually all previous interpretations ofJacksonianism. There was no consistent difference-in
class, occupation, or region-between theJacksonians and anti-Jacksonians, Benson argued. Both
parties contained big as well as small businessmen,
farmers, and city workers. Nor were there any
significant ideological differences. Both parries
used the same "agrarian" rhetoric; both were in
favor of greater equality of opportunity and
greater political democracy. Local and cultural
factors-religion and ethnicity, for examplewere the crucial determinants of party divisions,
not economic interests or ideology. Because the
movement toward democracy was much broader
than the Democratic party, he suggested, the "age
ofJackson" should be renamed the "age of egalitarianism. "
Other historians have continued Benson's deemphasis of party divisions in the Jacksonian pe-
riod and have'cited instead social and economic
developments that transcended partisan concerns.
Edward
T.
Pessen, rn Jacksonian America (1969),
portrayed the mid-nineteenth century as a time of
widespread and increasing social and economic inequality but suggested that party divisions did not
reflect the broader stratification f American society. Richard McCormick (1966) and Glyndon Van
Deusen (1963) similarly emphasized the pragma-
tism of Jackson and the Democrats and deemphasized clear ideological or social party
divisions.
More recent historians have begun to turn the
discussion of early nineteenth-century politics
back to the question of class. Among the new studies is Sean Wilentz's Chants Democratic (1.984),
which traces the emergence in New York City of
an industrial work force with an increasingly powerful class identity. 'Ihe grievances of such people,
he argues, were important in reshaping the way
Americans defined the concept of republicanism.
"Republicanism" is a concept that has attracted the
interest of many scholars in recent years. It describes an ideology, stretching back to the eighteenth century and forward into the twentieth, that
many historians believe has been central to American history: the belief that citizens in a republic
should have unobstructed opportunities to advance toward ownership of their own land or their
own enterprises. 'Workers in New York, V/ilentz
argues, waged an attack on the emerging system
of laissez-faire capitalism and the wage system,
which together threatened to choke off their
chances for advancement. The degree to which the
new industrial system threatened republican ideals
helped create a radical tradition in American public
life that found reflection, for a time, in at
some parts of the Jacksonian constituency.
least