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                                              Jacksonian Democracy


Profiles
*  Political Thought
 *  Colonial Government
*  Revolution
*  Constitution
*  Birth of Party Politics
*  War of 1812
*  James Monroe: "Era of Good Feeling" and Monroe Doctrine
*  Jacksonian Democracy
*  Regional Conflict and Compromise
*  1860 Election of Abraham Lincoln
*  Civil War 1861-62
*  Civil War 1863-65
*  Reconstruction and Impeachment of President Johnson
*  Gilded Age and Progressive Era
*  1912 Election of Woodrow Wilson
*  1916 Election and World War I
*  Women's Suffrage
*  Depression and 1932 Election of Franklin D. Roosevelt
*  Prelude to World War II
*  Pearl Harbor and Mobilization
*  World War II: European Theater
*  World War II: Pacific Theater 
*  Atomic Bomb and End of World War II
*  1948 Truman-Dewey Election
*  1960 Kennedy-Nixon Election
*  1964 Johnson-Goldwater Election
*  Civil Rights Movement
*  Vietnam: Evolution of the American Role
*  Vietnam: Kennedy Administration and Intervention
*  Vietnam: Johnson Administration and Escalation
*  Vietnam: Nixon, Ford and Fall of South Vietnam
*   1968 Humphrey-Nixon Election
*  Watergate Scandal and Resignation of President Nixon
*  1976 Carter-Ford Election
*  1980 & 1984 Reagan Elections
*  Clinton Impeachment 
*  2000 Bush-Gore Election
*  War in Iraq
*  2008 Obama-McCain Election
*  2012 Obama-Romney Election
PicturePortrait of John Quincy Adams Image: Library of Congress
Election of John Quincy Adams in 1824

     The national consensus which had seen President James Monroe elected without opposition to his second term in 1820 was shattered by the contentious election of 1824. Three members of Monroe's cabinet—Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, Secretary of War John Calhoun, and Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford—along with Speaker of the House Henry Clay and General Andrew Jackson, all sought to succeed Monroe.

     Crawford received the most votes in the caucus of the Democratic Republican members of Congress, but this did not deter the others, all members of the party, from running in the general election. Calhoun dropped out and was nominated for the vice-presidency. Jackson, with 43% of the popular vote, received 99 electoral votes and Adams, with 30% of the popular vote, came in second with 84 electoral votes. Crawford and Clay trailed well behind at third and fourth, respectively, tallying less than half of Adams's electoral vote tally. 

      Since no one had a majority, the 12th Amendment to the Constitution provided that the election would be determined by the House of Representatives, which was constrained in its choice to the three candidates who had received the largest number of electoral votes. Clay, a Kentuckian who was speaker of the House of Representatives, long had been hostile to Jackson, and used his influence to put together a coalition of representatives from sttes in the Ohio Valley and New England to support Adams, who was elected on the first ballot cast in the House.

      After his inauguration, Adams appointed Clay as Secretary of State. This  angered Jackson and his supporters, who charged that a "corrupt bargain" had taken place in exchange for Clay's support of Adams in the vote held in the House. The Jackson forces  immediately began their campaign to win the presidency from Adams in 1828, and the cloud over the legitimacy of Adams's presidency, along with his haughty manner and lack of political skills, limited his achievements in office. He proposed a plan to build new roads, canals and other capital projects, but had difficulty in securing support in the Congress. Toward the end of his term, he reluctantly supported a stiff tariff act which the Virginia legislature derided as the "Tariff of Abominations" for its impact in increasing prices for textiles and other basic goods while protecting northern manufacturers from foreign competition.

Election of Andrew Jackson in 1828

      The 1828 campaign featured vitriolic attacks on both sides. John Quincy Adams was described as "feeding at the public trough" and of padding his expense account. He was called a "pimp" for providing, while serving as ambassador to Russia, an American girl as a "gift" for Czar Alexander I and of turning the White House into a "gambling den" after bringing a billiard table into the residence. Jackson was portrayed as a "drunk," a brawler and an adulterer because his wife Rachel’s divorce was later found to have not been final when they first were married. His mother was branded as a prostitute and his father as a mulatto. See, e.g., Rachel & Andrew Jackson: A Love Story, Wnpt.net

      Perhaps partly due to the uproar following the 1824 election decided by the House, the 1828 election saw major reform of the election process. Some states started to allow voters, rather than state legislatures, to select presidential electors. Other changes amended voter eligibility requirements to eliminate or reduce property-holding and wealth as a condition of voting, thus greatly expanding the electorate. Aided by these changes and the highly-charged campaign, Jackson won by 647,000 votes to 507,000 and by 178 to 83 in the Electoral College. Over three times as many people cast votes in 1828 as had in the election four years earlier. After the results were known, the bitterness continued: Adams declined to participate in the Inauguration of his successor.
Picture
Print showing crowd in front of White House during Andrew Jackson's first inaugural reception in 1829. Image: Library of Congress
PictureCartoon published circa 1832-33 around time that Jackson ordered removal of federal deposits from the Bank of the United States and vetoed bill for renewal of its charter. Jackson, in royal costume, stands before a throne holding a "veto" in his left hand and a scepter in his right. The Federal Constitution and the arms of Pennsylvania (the Bank was located in Philadelphia) lie in tatters under his feet. Image: Library of Congress
       From the start of his presidency, Jackson promoted his image as the advocate of the "Common Man." At his Inaugural, he allowed large numbers of citizens into the White House, leading to the destruction of many of its furnishings; to escape the mob, Jackson left the building though a window. In his Inaugural Address, he proposed the abolition of the Electoral College, advocating unsuccessfully for the direct election of presidents and vice presidents. During his two terms, he vetoed more bills than all his predecessors combined, challenging the view that the only grounds for a presidential veto were a bill's constitutionality. He also set the model for political patronage, awarding government jobs which required no special expertise to friends and supporters.

      In his private life and prior public roles, Jackson's concerns for common men had shown its limitations. While called the first "president of the people," he owned 95 slaves when he took office and 150 by the end of his two terms. In his military career, he had conducted brutal campaigns against Native Americans,  killing Indian women and children in Georgia and Alabama after massacres in order to wipe out their villages for cotton plantations and also aggressively invading Florida to punish the Seminoles for harboring fugitive slaves. A year after taking office as president,  Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act he had proposed to Congress to force Native Americans to leave their traditional lands to reservations in the west, leading to such episodes as the "Trail of Tears" in which four thousand Cherokees died of cold, hunger, and disease on their way from Tennessee to lands beyond the Mississippi. 

     The contemporary two-party system also emerged in the Jacksonian era. When Jackson ran for re-election in 1832, the Democratic Republican Party  held the first national convention, replacing the former practice of having a caucus of its Congressional members decide its nominees. An anti-Jackson opposition party--the Whig Party--also soon organized, with many of its members united in criticism of Jackson's populist policies and his imperious style. 

Bank of the United States

      Jackson's populism also was illustrated in the controversy over the rechartering of The Bank of the United States. In 1832, four years prior to the expiration of its charter, Nicholas Biddle, the Bank's president, sought legislation to extend the length of the Bank's charter. When Congress passed the bill, Jackson vetoed it, framing the issue primarily in terms of the economic divisions of rich and poor, as well as the resentment toward the high proportion of its stock held by foreigners. 

      His critics suggested, however, that he may have been interested in  favoring the emerging New York investment market centered on Wall Street, where some of Jackson's supporters had personal interests, over the Philadelphia banking community, which was the base of the national bank's operations. Jackson's veto of the Bank legislation also led to a request by Senate Whigs for documents relating to the veto; after Jackson refused to comply, the Senate passed a resolution of censure, which was later expunged from the Senate record after Jackson's Democrats gained a Senate majority in the election of 1836.
....It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society-the farmers, mechanics, and laborers-who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.....
Excerpt from President Jackson's veto message of bill renewing charter of Bank of the United States, July 10, 1832
Avalon Project, Yale Law School
PictureJohn C. Calhoun in photo taken 1849 by Matthew Brady Image: Wikimedia Commons

The Eaton Scandal, the "Petticoat War"

       The relationship between Jackson and his vice president, John Calhoun of South Carolina, became strained when Calhoun's wife Flordie refused to invite Margaret "Peggy" Eaton, wife of John Eaton, Jackson's Secretary of War who was a close friend of Jackson's and a former senator from Tennessee, to social events. Eaton had defended the honor of Rachel Jackson during the presidential campaign, and Jackson reciprocated when Eaton and his wife became the subject of gossip. The Eatons had married shortly after Peggy Eaton's first husband, a Navy sailor, died by a suspected suicide on a voyage ordered by Secretary of War Eaton, apparently to allow Eaton and Peggy to conduct an affair while her husband was at sea. Although Eaton later resigned from the cabinet, Jackson resented Mrs. Calhoun's social ostracization of Peggy Eaton, and continued to support John Eaton in the face of the scandal, later appointing him governor of the Florida territory.
See Margaret Eaton O'Neal Affair
White House Historical Association

Nullification Crisis

      Another major controversy of Jackson's Administration which brought him into conflict with Calhoun related to the constitutional issues on the nature of the federal union presented by the Nullification Crisis. The clash first arose in November 1831 when South Carolina approved an ordinance of nullification declaring that a federal tariff was unconstitutional. The tariff was viewed as favoring Northern manufacturing, which wanted protection from foreign imports, over Southern agriculture, which was heavily dependent on the purchase of foreign goods and the export of its commodities, including cotton, to foreign buyers. 

       To enforce its position, in July 1832, the South Carolina legislature authorized a special convention to sanction the use of its militia to block the collection of the tariff in the state after February 1, 1833. As the potential for violence increased, the President issued a Proclamation in December 1832 declaring the South Carolina nullification act unconstitutional, and setting forth an extensive defense of his view of the federal union that would later be used extensively in the debates leading up to the Civil War.

      Jackson also dispatched federal troops and warships to South Carolina as the deadline approached. Calhoun then resigned as vice president to return to the Senate to lead his state's arguments against the imposition of federal authority. Violence was averted, however, when Senator Henry Clay and Calhoun, now in the Senate, partnered to draft a reduced tariff agreement that pacified South Carolina while allowing the Federal government to maintain its position that the state could not prevent the enforcement of federal acts. Calhoun would not abandon the concept of nullification, however, and later renewed it in his defense of the South's position on federal intervention over issues related to slavery. Fellow-citizens of the United States! the threat of unhallowed disunion-the names of those, once respected, by whom it is uttered--the array of military force to support it-denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. 
Fellow-citizens of the United States! the threat of unhallowed disunion-the names of those, once respected, by whom it is uttered--the array of military force to support it-denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend.
....Fellow-citizens! the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether your sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated.
Excerpts from President Jackson's Proclamation of December 10, 1832 on nullification
Library of Congress

       Jackson also dispatched federal troops and warships to South Carolina as the deadline approached. Calhoun then resigned as vice president to return to the Senate to lead his state's arguments against the imposition of federal authority. Violence was averted, however, when Senator Henry Clay and Calhoun, now in the Senate, partnered to draft a reduced tariff agreement that pacified South Carolina while allowing the Federal government to maintain its position that the state could not prevent the enforcement of federal acts. Calhoun would not abandon the concept of nullification, however, and later renewed it in his defense of the South's position on federal intervention over issues related to slavery. Fellow-citizens of the United States! the threat of unhallowed disunion-the names of those, once respected, by whom it is uttered--the array of military force to support it-denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. 
Leaving Office

       As he neared the end of his second term, Jackson supported the nomination of Martin Van Buren, his vice president and former secretary of state, to succeed him. Van Buren had successfully formed a political alliance that had helped elect Jackson, and as secretary of state was the only member of the cabinet to back Jackson during the Peggy Eaton scandal. He also had strengthened the Democratic Party, particularly through rewarding its loyalists with patronage appointments. 

      Before he left office, Jackson offered a long statement reviewing his record and assessing the status of issues still faced by the country, leaving on a note of optimism for the future:  
  
....The progress of the United States under our free and happy institutions has surpassed the most sanguine hopes of the founders of the republic. Our growth has been rapid beyond all former example -- in numbers, in wealth, in knowledge, and all the useful arts which contribute to the comforts and convenience of man...

   ...My own race is nearly run; advanced age and failing health warn me that before long I must pass beyond the reach of human events and cease to feel the vicissitudes of human affairs. I thank God that my life has been spent in a land of liberty and that He has given me a heart to love my country with the affection of a son. And, filled with gratitude for your constant and unwavering kindness, I bid you a last and affectionate farewell.
Andrew Jackson Farewell Address, March 4, 1837
American Presidency Project, University of California at Santa Barbara

      On the day after Van Buren was inaugurated, he was asked as he took leave of a few friends whether he had any regrets about anything. "Only two," said Jackson. "I regret I was unable to shoot Henry Clay or to hang John C. Calhoun."
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