Jacksonian Democracy, 1820–1840

This is Unit Ten, part one, covering the politics of the eighteen twenties and the rise of Andrew Jackson. Unit Nine closed by asking four northern classes what they thought about slavery. This unit is the politics that economy produced. Carry two ideas through. First, everything Jacksonian begins with an arithmetic problem in eighteen twenty-four, and you will meet it in the third entry. Second, and this is the harder one, the democratisation of these years is a single movement with two faces. The same statutes that made suffrage universal for White men are the statutes that made race the qualifying test. There is one entry that states the trade outright, and it is the most important in this lecture. By the end you will be able to state the arithmetic of eighteen twenty-four. To explain what the tariff argument was really about. To state both halves of what happened to the franchise. To explain the spoils system and rotation in office as one practice named twice. And to explain why a quarrel over dinner invitations belongs on an examination.

Four entries on an election with five candidates and only one party.

The field.

USH1 1351 The Election of 1824

The Federalist Party had ceased to function as a national organisation, so all five candidates in eighteen twenty-four ran as Democratic-Republicans — one surviving party contesting a presidential election against itself. A single-party field means the contest turns on personality and region rather than on any stated programme.

Who they were.

USH1 1352 The Five Candidates

John Quincy Adams stood for New England, Calhoun for the slaveholding South, Clay for the western states, Crawford for Georgia, and Jackson nationally, with Calhoun withdrawing to run for vice president instead. Crawford suffered a stroke in eighteen twenty-three and ran anyway, backed by Van Buren's New York machine.

The numbers.

USH1 1353 The Arithmetic of 1824

Jackson took one hundred fifty-two thousand nine hundred one popular votes to Adams's one hundred fourteen thousand twenty-three, and ninety-nine electoral votes to Adams's eighty-four. One hundred thirty-one electoral votes were needed of two hundred sixty-one, and nobody reached it. Under the Twelfth Amendment the House decided, each state casting one vote.

What the House did.

USH1 1354 The Corrupt Bargain

Speaker Clay opposed Jackson and worked the House to Adams's benefit, and his influence was decisive. Adams then made Clay Secretary of State, and Calhoun labelled the whole affair a corrupt bargain. Jackson led the popular vote and the electoral vote and still lost. Everything Jacksonian starts from that arithmetic.

Three entries on the programme Adams governed with, and it should sound familiar.

The programme.

USH1 1355 Clay's American System

Clay's American System combined high tariffs, a national bank, and federally sponsored internal improvements of canals and roads — three policies designed to work together, each funding or protecting the others. This is the Hamiltonian programme of Unit Eight revived under a new name and a western sponsor.

What Adams proposed with it.

USH1 1356 Adams's Proposals

Adams proposed a national university, a naval academy to train future leaders, extension of the Cumberland Road into Ohio, and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, breaking ground on the canal on the fourth of July, eighteen twenty-eight. He endorsed roads and canals to advance settlement in the West, funded from western land sales.

And the objection to all of it.

USH1 1357 The Constitutional Objection

Opponents in Congress held that the Constitution did not give the federal government the power to fund such projects, so internal improvements were challenged not on cost but on authority. It is the same objection Jefferson raised against the Bank, now aimed at roads.

Three entries on the tariff, and the middle one tells you what the fight was actually about.

The sequence.

USH1 1358 The Tariff Sequence

Congress approved a tariff in seventeen eighty-nine, Hamilton proposed a protective tariff in seventeen ninety, and further tariffs passed in eighteen sixteen and eighteen twenty-four. Adams proposed in eighteen twenty-eight a tariff amounting to fifty percent of the value of imported goods. Tariffs were not new. What changed in eighteen twenty-eight was the rate and who felt it.

What the South called it.

USH1 1359 The Tariff of Abominations

Southerners held that the federal government favoured one region, the North, over another, the South. Northern manufacturing was expanding while the South relied on imports, so the South bore the heaviest burden of a tax on imported goods, and they named the eighteen twenty-eight measure the Tariff of Abominations. Now take the deeper fear, which the anchor states outright and which is not economic. The tariff suggested to southerners that the federal government would unilaterally take steps that hurt the South, and that slavery could come under attack from a hostile northern majority in Congress. The tariff argument is never only about the tariff. It is a rehearsal of the argument about slavery, conducted in a safer vocabulary.

The doctrine written in reply.

USH1 1360 Calhoun's Exposition

Vice President Calhoun wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest anonymously for the state legislature, arguing that sovereign powers are divided between the General and State Governments. He held that denying states the power to judge federal infractions would convert the government into a great consolidated government with unlimited powers.

Four entries now, and the third is the one I flagged at the start. It is the entry this unit exists to teach.

The political culture changing underneath.

USH1 1361 The End of Deference

Deference was the practice of showing respect for those distinguished by military accomplishment, educational attainment, business success or family pedigree — a habit of politics that went into decline through the eighteen twenties. Deference is what the corrupt bargain violated in the eyes of Jackson's supporters, and what his campaigns then attacked directly.

The property tests coming down.

USH1 1362 Property Qualifications Fall

Many state constitutions had imposed property qualifications as a means to keep democratic tendencies in check, and the newer states abandoned them — Indiana in eighteen sixteen, Illinois in eighteen eighteen, Alabama in eighteen nineteen, Mississippi in eighteen thirty-two. New York removed its property qualification in eighteen twenty-one, and by that decade eighty percent of its White male population could vote.

And what was taken away in the same statutes.

USH1 1363 The Franchise, Expanded and Contracted

The anchor states the exchange without softening it. Race replaced property qualifications as the criterion for voting rights, and American democracy had a decidedly racist orientation, a White majority limiting the rights of Black minorities. New Jersey explicitly restricted the vote to White men only. Connecticut passed a law in eighteen fourteen taking the vote away from free Black men. New York, in the same constitution that removed property tests for White men, effectively disenfranchised free Black men in eighteen twenty-two by requiring men of colour to hold property worth over two hundred fifty dollars. Both witnesses confirm and extend it. At the Revolution only two states explicitly limited Black voting rights, and by eighteen thirty-nine almost all did. Pennsylvania prohibited Black voting completely in eighteen thirty-eight. By eighteen fifty-eight free Black men could vote in only four states. And New Jersey rescinded the vote for propertied unmarried women at the very moment it extended suffrage to all adult White men. Hold both halves together, because they are one movement and not two. A course that teaches Jacksonian democracy as expansion is describing what happened to White men. A course that teaches it as contraction is describing what happened to everyone else. The anchor states the trade explicitly, so neither reading needs a witness to license it, and the exam can ask for either. By eighteen forty only Louisiana, Rhode Island and Virginia still kept property tests for White men at all.

The New York provision, on its own.

USH1 1364 New York's Two Hundred Fifty Dollars

New York required men of colour to hold property worth over two hundred fifty dollars to vote, while removing property requirements for White men entirely — one constitution containing both provisions. A property test applied to one race and abolished for another is a racial test wearing a property test's clothes.

Two entries on how the new voters were organised, and what the organising became.

The machine.

USH1 1365 The Bucktails

Van Buren's Bucktail faction in New York was named for the deer's tail its members wore, a symbol of membership in the Tammany Society, and it gained power by cultivating loyalty to the will of the majority rather than to an elite family. They replaced the Council of Appointments with direct elections, making thousands of jobs available to candidates with majority support.

What that became.

USH1 1366 The Spoils System

Parties could now nominate and support candidates based on their loyalty to the party, and distribute public offices accordingly. The name comes from the expression that to the victor belong the spoils. The anchor calls the practice a harbinger of future patronage politics in the United States.

Two entries on the rematch.

The result.

USH1 1367 The Election of 1828

Jackson took fifty-six percent of the popular vote and sixty-eight percent of the electoral vote in November eighteen twenty-eight — a decisive answer to the House decision of four years earlier. The margin matters because it let Jackson claim a popular mandate the previous election had denied him.

How it was fought.

USH1 1368 The Campaign

Campaign material set Adams who can write against Jackson who can fight, and revived the hero of New Orleans, with Hickory Clubs formed across the country in tribute to Jackson's nickname, Old Hickory. Jackson's side charged that three hundred thousand dollars had gone missing from the Treasury Department.

Three entries on the offices, and note that one practice here carries two names depending on who is speaking.

What he called it.

USH1 1369 Rotation in Office

Jackson removed almost fifty percent of appointed civil officers and appointed replacements, calling the practice rotation in office, on the stated principle that no man should hold an office long enough to think it his own. His opponents called the same practice the spoils system, after Van Buren's Bucktails.

Who received the posts.

USH1 1370 Who Got the Jobs

Lucrative posts such as postmaster and deputy postmaster went to party loyalists, especially where Jackson's support was weak, New England in particular, and Democratic newspaper editors who had backed him received government positions. One Jackson appointee in New York City made off with over a million dollars.

His informal advisers.

USH1 1371 The Kitchen Cabinet

An informal group of presidential advisers, Van Buren among them, became known as the Kitchen Cabinet, and they highlighted the importance of party loyalty to Jackson and the Democratic Party. Influence ran outside the formal cabinet, which is itself a statement about how the presidency was changing.

Two entries to close, and the second explains why the first is not gossip.

The affair.

USH1 1372 The Peggy Eaton Affair

Margaret O'Neal had married the naval officer John Timberlake and had three children. Timberlake committed suicide in eighteen twenty-eight and rumours followed about her. She married Senator John Eaton, with Jackson's approval. Calhoun's wife and other socialites snubbed her, and Jackson defended her as chaste as a virgin.

Why a social quarrel is on the exam.

USH1 1373 Why the Affair Mattered

Washington society split over whether to receive Margaret Eaton. Van Buren, a widower with no household to compromise, supported the Eatons socially and gained Jackson's favour by it. Calhoun's wife led the snubbing, and Calhoun lost the president's confidence. The vice presidency and the succession turned on a question of drawing rooms, and a cabinet was reorganised around who would dine with whom. Teach this as causation, not gossip. Van Buren's rise and Calhoun's fall decide who succeeds Jackson, which decides who is president when the Panic of eighteen thirty-seven arrives, which decides the election of eighteen forty. A student who dismisses the affair as trivia loses the chain connecting Jackson's first term to the Whig victory twelve years later.

Look at what you can now do. You can state the arithmetic of eighteen twenty-four: Jackson leading the popular vote and the electoral vote, nobody reaching one hundred thirty-one, the House choosing Adams, and Clay becoming Secretary of State. You can explain what the tariff argument was really about — that the federal government might unilaterally act against the South, and that slavery could come under attack from a hostile northern majority. You can state both halves of what happened to the franchise, and say that they are one movement: race replaced property as the criterion, so the same statutes enfranchised White men and disenfranchised everyone else. You can explain rotation in office and the spoils system as one practice named twice, depending on who is speaking. And you can explain why the Eaton affair is causation, because it made Van Buren the successor and put him in office when the Panic of eighteen thirty-seven arrived.