Chapter 10 The Jacksonian Era 1824–1845

1. Chapter 10 The Jacksonian Era 1824–1845

2. Key Questions: • What characterized the rise of new political parties: Jacksonian Democrats and Whigs? • What characterized the disfranchisement of free black people and women? • What led to the birth of the Whig party? • What was the Second Great Awakening? • What characterized the Bank War? • What led to the growing conflict over slavery?

3. AGE OF JACKSON • Election of 1828 • Era of Common Man • Problems • Jackson v Bank of US • Indian Removal • Whig Party • Post Jackson presidents

4. I. Election of 1828

5. II. Era of Common Man • Extension of franchise (right-to-vote) • Education • Immigration

6. AGE OF JACKSON • Election of 1828 • Era of Common Man • Problems • Jackson v Bank of US • Indian Removal • Whig Party • Post Jackson presidents

7. III. Problems • “Kitchen Cabinet” & no agenda • Peggy Eaton Affair • South Carolina Nullification Crisis • Tariff of Abomination 1828 • South Carolina Exposition & Protest • 1832 tariff & nullification • Jackson’s view = Force Bill • Compromise • Re-election, 1832

8. AGE OF JACKSON • Election of 1828 • Era of Common Man • Problems • Jackson v Bank of US • Indian Removal • Whig Party • Post Jackson presidents

9. IV. Jackson v Bank of US • 2nd Bank of US, 1816 • Nicholas Biddle • Apply for re-charter early in 1832 • Jackson tries to kill – Roger Taney • Biddle fights back and loses

10. V. Indian Removal • Indian Removal Act, 1830 • Resistance • Sauk & Fox in Illinois • Cherokee • Acculturated • Sequoyah • US (Georgia) v Cherokee Nation (1831) = domestic dependent nations • Worcester v Georgia (1832) • Trail of Tears 1835 • Seminoles • Fate in Oklahoma

11. VI. Whig Party

12. VII. Post Jackson Presidents • Martin Van Buren (1837-1841) = depression • William Henry Harrison (1841) • John Tyler (1841-1845)

13. The Egalitarian Impulse • The extension of white male democracy • Individual states decided who could vote and many newly admitted states eliminated property qualifications as did older eastern states. Only Rhode Island, Virginia, and Louisiana did not have universal white male suffrage by the end of the 1820s. • Suffrage reform was part of a general democratization of state government structures and procedures. • The growing demand that all white men be treated equally helped stimulate the democratic reforms. • Expansion of white male political opportunities was paralleled by the curbing of rights for free black and women.

14. The Egalitarian Impulse, cont’d. • The popular religious revolt • Between 1800 and 1840, the Second Great Awakening transformed the religious landscape of America. • Baptists and Methodists led the religious revival that promoted evangelical religion that supported democracy by encouraging organizational forms that provided a voice to popular culture. • Evangelical Christianity appealed strongly to women and African Americans but race and gender limited access to positions of power.

15. The Egalitarian Impulse, cont’d. • The rise of the Jacksonians • The new Democratic Party formed between 1824 and 1828 had the perfect candidate in Andrew Jackson. Jackson’s rise to prominence from poor origins made him a good symbol of the democratic ideas of the 1820s. • Jackson was the anti-elitist people’s champion while John Quincy Adams seemed largely out of step with the times. • Martin Van Buren was a new breed of politician who developed strong political organizations based on discipline and strict adherence to party policies. • Jackson won a landslide victory in the 1828 presidential election.

16. Jackson’s Presidency • Jackson’s appeal • Ordinary Americans identified with Jackson and he convinced them that he was using his office to enforce their will. • Jackson attacked special privilege by reforming the federal bureaucracy. These reforms had more style than substance and opened the way for the “spoils” system. • Jackson opposed Henry Clay’s American system, vetoing the Maysville Road Bill.

17. Jackson’s Presidency, cont’d. • Indian removal • Native Americans held land east of the Mississippi River that white men wanted, especially in the South where the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaws, and Seminoles controlled large areas. • In 1828, the Georgia state legislature placed the Cherokee under state jurisdiction, denying the Native American legal rights. • Congress passed the Indian Removal Act on Jackson’s recommendation and led to the removal of Native Americans east of the Mississippi River.

18. Jackson’s Presidency, cont’d. • The Nullification Crisis • The tariff issue precipitated the nullification crisis, the most serious sectional dispute since the Missouri debates of 1819-1820 • Southerners denounced the protective measures in the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 . The most strident protests came from South Carolina lowcountry planters who called themselves nullifiers. John Calhoun was their leader. • An 1832 South Carolina convention nullified the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 leading Jackson to push the Force Bill through Congress that authorized military force against nullifiers. • The compromise Tariff of 1833 eased tensions.

19. Jackson’s Presidency, cont’d. • The Bank War • The Bank War broke out in 1832 when Jackson vetoed an early rechartering of the Bank of the United States. • The business community and eastern elites attacked the bank veto. The Bank became an issue in the 1832 election which Jackson won handily over Clay. • Jackson moved to destroy the bank by removing federal deposits. • During Jackson’s second term, land speculation reached a frenzy and when the bubble burst, Democrats were criticized for their economic policies.

20. Van Buren and Hard Times • The Panic of 1837 • Martin Van Buren’s presidency opened with a financial panic that helped send the economy into a dive that eventually became a severe depression. • Numerous bankruptcies, the drying up of investment capital, stagnating business, and unemployment rocked the nation. • The independent treasury • The Whig party was emerging in the late 1830s. They criticized Jackson’s policies, including the Specie Circular of 1836. • To curb government intrusion in banking, the Independent Treasury System was established but was largely a political move.

21. Van Buren and Hard Times, cont’d. • Uproar over slavery • Led by William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionists stepped up their attacks on slavery. • Beginning in 1835, hundreds of antislavery petitions flooded Congress, most calling for the abolition of slavery in Washington, D.C. • Southerners pushed through the gag rule to eliminate debate on slavery.

22. The Rise of the Whig Party • The party taking shape • Congressional reaction to Jackson’s actions against the Bank led to the founding of the Whig Party. • Local and state coalition of the Whigs elected a majority to the House of Representatives in 1835. • Lacking an effective national organization, the Whigs fielded three regional presidential candidates in 1836 but Van Buren won the election.

23. The Rise of the Whig Party • Whig persuasion • Whigs viewed government as a force to promote economic development. • The Whigs were the party of bankers, manufacturers, small-town entrepreneurs, commercial farmers, and skilled workers. • Whigs tended to be native-born Protestants who supported evangelical religion. • The Whigs supported reform efforts, especially ones directed at non-English and Catholic immigrants.

24. The Rise of the Whig Party, cont’d. • The election of 1840 • Beating the Democrats at their own game, the Whigs ran William Henry Harrison for president in 1840, stressing his military background and supposed common man origins. • The Whig campaign featured a lively mix of slogans, parades, and pageants that imparted a carnival atmosphere to politics. • Harrison won the presidency and the Whigs gained control of Congress. • Map: The Election of 1840, p. 288

25. The Whigs in Power • Harrison and Tyler • Harrison’s death brought former Democrat John Tyler to the presidency. Tyler espoused a states’ rights, agrarian philosophy that clashed with Whig policies. • The Texas issue • Tyler’s secretary of state, Daniel Webster, negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty establishing the Canadian border. • Tyler wanted to annex Texas but the Senate rejected annexation. Antislavery advocates saw the Texas annexation as a slaveholders’ conspiracy.

26. The Whigs in Power • The election of 1844 • In the election of 1844, both Clay, the Whig candidate, and Van Buren, the strong Democratic candidate, opposed the annexation of Texas. • Van Buren’s anti-Texas stance cost him the Democratic nomination, which went to a dark horse, James K. Polk of Tennessee. • The Democrat platform supported American expansionism, seeking to annex Oregon and Texas. • Polk won the election and Texas was annexed in 1845.

27. Conclusion • The Jacksonian era stimulated a revolution in American politics, leading to the rise of disciplined parties that appealed to a mass electorate. Voter participation skyrocketed. • The national issues argued by the Democrats and Whigs until 1844 were largely economic.

28. MAP 10–1 Methods of Electing Presidential Electors, 1800 and 1824 The Constitution permits each state legislature to choose the method of electing presidential electors for its state. In 1800 the legislatures in most states appointed the electors. By 1824 most states had adopted more democratic systems in which electors pledged to specific presidential candidates were selected by popular vote in statewide elections. Data Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (1960), p. 681.

29. MAP 10–2 The Election of 1828 Andrew Jackson won a decisive victory in 1828 by sweeping the South and West and making major inroads in the Northeast.

30. MAP 10–3 Indian Removals The fixed policy of the Jackson administration and pressure from the states forced Native Americans in the 1830s to migrate from their eastern homelands to a special Indian reserve west of the Mississippi River.

31. MAP 10–4 The Election of 1840 Building upon their strength in the commercializing North, the Whigs attracted enough rural voters in the South and West to win the election of 1840.

32. This early nineteenth-century painting of a polling place in Philadelphia illustrates the growing involvement of ordinary Americans in politics. As suffrage broadened and more Americans came out to vote, elections became more heated and emotional. John L. Krimmel, Painting (1786–1821), Oil on Canvas, H. 16 3/8″ × W. 25 5/8”. (AN: 59.131) Courtesy, Winterthur Museum, Election Day in Philadelphia (1815) - DETAIL.

33. The Second Great Awakening originated on the frontier. Preachers were adept at arousing emotional fervor, and women in particular responded to the evangelical message of spiritual equality open to all who would accept Christ into their lives. Collection of the New York Historical Society, Negative # 26275.

34. To the opponents of the Jacksonians, elections had become a degrading spectacle in which conniving Democratic politicians, such as the one shown below handing a voting ticket to the stereotypical Irishman in the light coat, were corrupting the republic’s political culture. First State Election in Detroit, Michigan, 1837, c. 1837. Thomas Mickell Burnham. Gift of Mrs. Samuel T. Carson. Photograph 1991 The Detroit Institute of Arts.

35. This bust portrait of Jackson in uniform, issued as print during the 1832 presidential race, invokes his military image and especially his victory at New Orleans in 1815.

36. This view from the west of the Capitol in 1832 reveals that during Jackson’s presidency Washington was still predominantly rural.

37. Sequoyah, a Cherokee scholar, developed a written table of syllables for the Cherokee language that enabled his people to publish a tribal newspaper in both Cherokee and English.

38. For the Cherokees, the Trail of Tears stretched 1,200 miles from the homeland in the East to what became the Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

39. This Democratic cartoon portrays Jackson as the champion of the people attacking the Bank of the United States, a many-headed monster whose tentacles of corruption spread throughout the states. Collection of The New York Historical Society, Negative # 42459.

40. Broken families and demoralized workers were among the litany of evils blamed on the Panic of 1837.

41. FIGURE 10–1 Cotton Prices and the Value of Federal Land Sales in Five Southern States, 1825–1845 Because the U.S. economy was heavily dependent on cotton exports as a source of credit, the collapse of cotton prices, and a corresponding plunge in the sales of federal land after a speculative runup in the newer cotton regions of the South, triggered a financial panic in the late 1830s. Data Source: Douglas C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (1966), tab. A-X, p. 257.

42. FIGURE 10–2 Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections, 1824–1840 The creation of mass-based political parties dramatically increased voter turnout in presidential elections. Voting surged in 1828 with the emergence of the Jacksonian Democratic party and again in 1840 when the Whig party learned to appeal to the mass electorate. Data Source: Richard P. McCormick, “New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics,” in The Nature of Jacksonian America, ed. Douglas T. Miller (1972), p. 103.

43. The Whigs made endless use of log cabins as part of their appeal to ordinary Americans in the campaign of 1840. The Whigs of Hartford, Connecticut, dedicated this log cabin to Harrison on July 4.