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JACKSONIAN AMERICA

JACKSONIAN AMERICA. INTRODUCTION. INTRODUCTION. When the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited the USA in 1831, one feature of American society struck him as “fundamental”: the “general equality of among the people.”

patricia-whitley
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JACKSONIAN AMERICA

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  1. JACKSONIAN AMERICA

  2. INTRODUCTION

  3. INTRODUCTION • When the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville visited the USA in 1831, one feature of American society struck him as “fundamental”: the “general equality of among the people.” • Unlike older societies, in which privilege and wealth passed from generation to generation within an entrenched upper class, America had no rigid distinctions of rank.

  4. INTRODUCTION • “ The government of democracy,” wrote de Tocqueville in his classic “Democracy in America (1835-1840), “brings the notion of political rights to the level of the humblest citizens, just as the dissemination of wealth brings the notion of property within the reach of all members of the community.”

  5. Yet he also wondered how long the fluidity of American society could survive in the face of the growth of mfg., and the rise of the factory system. Industrialism, he feared, would create a large class of dependent workers and a small group of new aristocrats. For, as he explained, “at the very moment at which the science of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the class of masters.” Americans, too, questioned the future of their democracy in these years of economic and territorial growth. INTRODUCTION

  6. INTRODUCTION • Some feared that the nation’s rapid growth would produce chaos and insisted that the country’s first priority must be to establish order and a clear system of authority.

  7. INTRODUCTION • Others argued that the greatest danger facing the nation was privilege and that society’s goal should be to eliminate the favored status of powerful elites and make opportunity more widely available. • Advocates of this view seized control of the federal govt., in 1829 with the inauguration of Andrew Jackson.

  8. AJ and his followers were not egalitarians. They did nothing to challenge the existence of slavery. They supervised one of the harshest assaults on American Indians in the nation’s history. They accepted the necessity of economic inequality and social gradation. AJ, himself, was a frontier aristocrat. Most of those who served him were people of wealth and standing. But they were not aristocrats by birth. They had, they believed, risen to prominence on the basis of their own talents and energies. Their goal in public life was to ensure that others like themselves would have the opportunity to do the same. INTRODUCTION

  9. INTRODUCTION • The “democratization” of govt., over which AJ presided was accompanied by lofty rhetoric of equality and aroused the excitement of working people.

  10. INTRODUCTION • To the national leaders, who promoted that democratization, however, its purpose was not to aid farmers and workers. • It was even less to assist the truly disenfranchised: African Americans (both slave and free), women, and Native Americans. • It was to challenge the power of eastern elites for the sake of the rising entrepreneurs of the South and the West.

  11. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828

  12. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • By the time of the 1828 election, a new two party system had begun to emerge out of the divisions among the Republicans. • On one side stood the National Republicans with its leader JQA • Opposing them were the followers of AJ, who took the name of Democrats. • The National Republicans supported the economic nationalism of the preceding years.

  13. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • The Democrats called for an assault on privilege and a widening of opportunity. • JQA attracted the support of most of the remaining Federalists. • AJ appealed to a broad coalition that opposed the “economic aristocracy”. • The campaign of 1828 quickly degenerated into a war of personal invective.

  14. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • The Jacksonians charged that JQA as president had been guilty of gross waste and had used funds to buy gambling devices (a chess set and a billiard table) for the White House. • They also accused JQA, that while ambassador to Russia, he “procured” for a Russian diplomat the services of a young lady.

  15. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • JQA’s supporters hurled even worse accusations at AJ. • They called him a murderer and distributed a “coffin handbill,” which listed, within coffin-shaped outlines, the names of militiamen who AJ was said to have shot in cold blood during the War of 1812. (Deserters)

  16. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELCTION OF 1828 • They also called AJ’s wife a bigamist. • AJ had married Rachel at a time when both incorrectly believed her first husband had divorced her.

  17. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • When Rachel read of the accusations against her shortly after the election, she collapsed and , a few weeks later died. • Not without reason, Jackson blamed his opponents for her death.

  18. JACKSON TRIUMPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • AJ’s victory was decisive but sectional. • AJ received 58% of the popular vote and 68% of the ev. • JQA swept N.E. and showed significant strength in the Mid-Atlantic region.

  19. JACKSON TRIUPHANT: THE ELECTION OF 1828 • Despite the sectional nature of the election returns, Jacksonians considered their victory as complete and as important as TJ’s victory in 1800. • To them, once again, the forces of privilege had been driven from Washington, DC. • To them, once again, a champion of democracy would occupy the White House and restore liberty to the people and to the economy. • To them, America had entered the “age of the common man.”

  20. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS

  21. 3/4/1829: Thousands of Americans from all regions of the country, including farmers, workers, and others of modest social status, crowded Washington, DC, to witness the inauguration of Andrew Johnson. After the ceremonies, the rowdy crowd followed AJ to the White House. There at a public reception open to all, they filled the state rooms to overflowing, trampling over one another, soiling the carpets, generally ruining the furniture in their eagerness to shake the new president’s hand. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS

  22. THE RISE IN MASS POLITICS • “It was a proud day for the people,” wrote Amos Kendall, one of AJ’s closet political associates. • “General Jackson is their own President.” • To other observers, the scene was less appealing.

  23. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS • Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story looked at the inauguration party and remarked with disgust: “The reign of King ‘Mob” seems triumphant.”

  24. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE

  25. THE RISE IN MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE • What some historians have called the “Age of Jackson” did not advance the cause of economic equality. • The distribution of wealth and property in USA was little different at the end of the Jacksonian era than it was at the start. • But it did mark a transformation of American politics that extended the right to vote widely to new groups.

  26. Until the 1820s, relatively few Americans had the right to vote. Most states limited the franchise to white male property owners or taxpayers or both. This barred an huge number of the less affluent from the voting rolls. But even before AJ’s election, the rules governing voting began to expand. Changes came first in Ohio and other new states of the West. When these states joined the Union, the adopted constitutions that guaranteed all adult white males the right to vote and gave all voters the right to hold public office. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE

  27. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS: THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE • Other states, concerned about losing population to the West and thinking that extending the vote might encourage some residents to stay, began to grant similar rights to their citizens. • They began to drop or reduce the property qualifications or taxpaying requirements. • Eventually every state democratized its electorate to some degree, although some much late and less fully than others.

  28. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE • Change provoked resistance, and at times, the democratic trend fell short of the aims of more radical reformers. • EXAMPLE: 1820: MA., held a constitutional convention. • Reform-minded delegates complained that the rich were better represented than the poor, both because of restrictions on voting and officeholding and because of a peculiar system by which members of the state senate represented property rather than people.

  29. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE • But Daniel Webster, one of the more conservative delegates, opposed democratic changes on the grounds that “power naturally and necessarily follows property” and that “property as such should have its weight and influence in political arrangement.

  30. Webster and the rest of the conservatives could not prevent the reform of the rules for representation in the state senate. Nor could they prevent elimination of the property requirement for voting. But to the dismay of the radicals, the new constitution required that every voter be a taxpayer and that the governor be the owner of considerable real estate. However, more often than not, the forces of democratization prevailed in the states. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE

  31. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE • 1821: In the NY convention, conservatives led by James Kent insisted that a taxpaying requirement for voting was not enough and that, at least in the election of state senators, the property qualification should survive.

  32. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE EXPANDING ELECTORATE • Reformers citing the DofI, argued that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, not property, were the main concerns of society and government. • The property qualification was abolished. • The wave of state reforms was generally peaceful, but in RI democratization efforts caused considerable instability.

  33. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE DORR REBELLION

  34. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE DORR REBELLION • The RI constitution barred more than half the adult males of the state from voting. • The conservative legislature, chosen by this restricted electorate, blocked all efforts at reform. • 1840: A lawyer and activist Thomas W. Dorr and a group of followers formed a “People’s party,” and held a convention.

  35. At the convention, Dorr and his followers drafted a constitution and then submitted it to a popular vote. It was overwhelmingly approved. The existing legislature refused to accept the Dorr document and submitted a new constitution of its own to the voters. It was narrowly defeated. In the meantime, the Dorrites had begun to set up a new government , under their constitution, with Dorr as governor. 1842: RI had two governments, both claiming to be the legitimate government. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE DORR REBELLION

  36. The old state govt., proclaimed that Dorr and his followers were rebels and began to arrest them. Meanwhile, the Dorrites made a brief and ineffectual effort to capture the state arsenal. The Dorr Rebellion quickly failed. Dorr surrendered and was briefly imprisoned. But the episode helped pressure the old guard to draft a new constitution, which greatly expanded the suffrage. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE DORR REBELLION

  37. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:DEMOCRATIC REFORMS • The democratization process was far from complete. • In much of the South, election laws continued to favor the planters and politicians of older counties and limited the influence of more newly settled western areas. • Slaves were disenfranchised.

  38. Free blacks could vote nowhere in the South and hardly anywhere in the North. PA., amended its state constitution in 1838 to strip African Americans of the right to vote they had previously enjoyed. In no state could women vote. Nowhere was the ballot secret. Often voters cast a spoken vote instead of a written vote. This meant that political leaders could, and often did bribe and intimidate them. Yet the number of voters increased far more rapidly than the population as a whole. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:DEMOCRATIC REFORMS

  39. One of the most striking and important political trends of the 19th century was the change in the method of choosing presidential electors and the dramatic increase in popular participation in the process. 1800: The legislature chose the electors in ten of the states, and the people in only six. 1828: Electors were chosen in every state except SC. Pres. Election of 1824: Less than 27% of adult white males voted. Pres. Election of 1828: The figure rose to 57% Pres. Election of 1840: 80% THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:DEMOCRATIC REFORMS

  40. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMATION OF PARTY

  41. The high level of voter participation was only partly the result of an expanded electorate. It was also the result of a growing interest in politics and a strengthening of party organization and, perhaps equally important, party loyalty. Although party competition was part of American politics almost from the beginning of the republic, acceptance of the idea of party was not. For more than 30 years. Most Americans who had opinions about the nature of govt., considered parties evils to be avoided and thought the nation should seek a broad consensus in which permanent factional lines would not exist. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY

  42. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY • 1820s and 1830s; Those assumptions gave way to a new view: that permanent, institutionalized parties were a desirable part of the political process, that indeed they were essential to democracy.

  43. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY • The elevation of the idea of party occurred first at the state level, most prominently in New York. • There Martin Van Buren led a dissident political faction. • The years after the War of 1812, this group began to challenge the established political leadership.

  44. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY • The established political leadership was led by the aristocratic governor, De Witt Clinton. • Clinton and his followers dominated the state for years. • Factional rivalries were not new. • But van Buren’s challenge was.

  45. The Van Buren faction argued that only an institutionalized party, based in the people at large, could ensure genuine democracy. In the new kind of party ideological commitments would be less important than loyalty to the party itself. Preservation of the party as an institution – through favors, rewards, and patronage – would be the principal of the leadership. Above all, for a party to survive, it must have a permanent opposition. Competing parties would give each faction a sense of purpose. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY

  46. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY • Competing parties would force politicians to remain continually attuned to the will of the people. • Competing parties would check and balance each other in much the same way that the different branches of govt., checked and balanced each other.

  47. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY • Late 1820s: This new idea of party was spreading beyond NY. • The election of AJ in 1828, the result of a popular movement that seemed to stand apart from the usual political elites, seemed further to legitimize the idea of party as a popular democratic institution.

  48. 1830s: A fully formed two-party system began to operate at the national level. Each party was committed to its own existence as an institution and willing to accept the legitimacy of its opposition. The anti-Jackson forces began to call themselves: WHIGS. Jackson’s followers called themselves: Democrats – no longer Democratic-Republicans – thus giving a permanent name to what is now the nation’s oldest political party. THE RISE OF MASS POLITICS:THE LEGITIMIZATION OF PARTY

  49. PRESIDENT OF THE COMMAN MAN

  50. PRESIDENT OF THE COMMAN MAN • Unlike TJ, AJ was no democratic philosopher. • The Democratic Party, much less than AJ’s DR Party, embraced no clear or uniform ideological position. • But AJ did embrace a distinct, if simple, theory of democracy.

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