Jacksonian Democracy, 1820–1840

This is Unit Ten, part two, covering the two great fights of Jackson's presidency and the policy that defined the era. Part one closed with a quarrel over dinner invitations that made Van Buren the successor. This half opens with what he inherited. Carry this through. Nullification and the Bank War are the same question asked twice: does a national majority govern, or can a determined minority stop it? Jackson answers one way both times. Then the unit turns to Indian Removal, where the Supreme Court answers against him — and the answer changes nothing at all. That last fact is what the final entry is for. By the end you will be able to explain why the compromise tariff of eighteen thirty-two failed. To state what the Force Bill left unsettled. To explain Clay's miscalculation over the Bank. To say why the Cherokee were removed although they met the condition set for them. And to explain what Worcester held and why the holding changed nothing.

Four entries on how a customs duty became a constitutional crisis.

Where the affair left Van Buren.

USH1 1374 Van Buren Rises

Van Buren emerged from the affair as Jackson's closest ally and eventual successor, while Calhoun moved into open opposition — a New York machine politician now positioned to inherit an entire national party. Calhoun's opposition then takes doctrinal form in the nullification crisis.

The economics behind that crisis.

USH1 1375 Cotton Prices Fall

Cotton fell from thirty-one cents per pound in eighteen eighteen to eight cents by eighteen thirty-one, so southern income collapsed while the price of imported manufactures stayed high. Southerners blamed the tariff for raising import prices while their own income fell, which is what made the tariff intolerable rather than merely unwelcome.

The doctrine built on that grievance.

USH1 1376 Calhoun's Doctrine

Calhoun held that an individual state could void, or nullify, federal law where national majorities acted against a regional minority's interests, with the resentment tied directly to slavery concerns, as some southerners feared federal action against slavery itself. This is the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions taken up and acted on, thirty years later.

Whose interests it protected.

USH1 1377 Who Nullification Served

The theory gave wealthy slaveholders, a minority, the argument for resisting national action against their interests, with Governor James Hamilton denouncing the despotic majority that oppresses us. It is a doctrine of minority rights, argued by the wealthiest men in the state on behalf of their property in people.

Three entries on the crisis itself, and the first two tell you what the fight was not about.

The attempted compromise.

USH1 1378 The Tariff of 1832

Jackson pressed for lower rates, and the eighteen thirty-two tariff lowered the rates on some products to calm southern opposition — a federal concession offered before any state had formally acted. It failed to resolve the crisis, which indicates the real grievance was never the rate itself.

What South Carolina did.

USH1 1379 The Ordinance of Nullification

In November eighteen thirty-two South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring both the eighteen twenty-eight and eighteen thirty-two tariffs null and void — a state legislature purporting to void an act of Congress within its borders. This is the first time the doctrine was actually exercised rather than merely asserted.

The federal answer.

USH1 1380 The Force Bill

Congress passed the Force Bill in eighteen thirty-three, giving the federal government the right to use federal troops to ensure compliance with federal law. Jackson, a slaveholding southerner himself, treated nullification as a threat to the Union rather than a defence of the South. And South Carolinians opposed to the nullifiers told him that eight thousand men stood ready to defend the Union, meaning ready to fight their own state. Two things to hold. The crisis was defused by a compromise tariff and neither side tested the Force Bill, so the constitutional question was left open rather than settled. And the split inside South Carolina matters as much as the split between South Carolina and Washington. Secession was never a united southern position, and it was not one here.

Four entries on the Bank, and the third is the one to understand properly, because the usual telling has it backwards.

The two banks.

USH1 1381 The Two Banks

The First Bank was established in seventeen ninety-one and its charter expired in eighteen sixteen. The Second Bank was approved that year with a twenty-year charter set to expire in eighteen thirty-six. More than two hundred banks were each issuing paper money with no standard value, and that chaos had contributed to the Panic of eighteen nineteen.

The man who ran it.

USH1 1382 Nicholas Biddle

Nicholas Biddle directed the Second Bank of the United States, and Jackson disliked the man personally as well as the institution. Biddle publicly claimed to hold more power than President Jackson himself, and the anchor says those self-important statements helped fuel sentiment against the institution. Personality did real work here.

The miscalculation that decided it.

USH1 1383 Clay's Miscalculation

In the eighteen thirty-two re-election campaign, Clay and congressional opponents pushed re-chartering the Bank early. The charter did not expire until eighteen thirty-six, so there was no need to act. They forced the issue deliberately, expecting that Jackson would veto and that the veto would destroy him with commercial voters. Jackson used his executive authority to veto the measure, and then took nearly fifty-three percent of the popular vote against Clay. Treat the early re-charter as an accident of timing and you have the politics exactly backwards. Clay chose the ground and lost on it, because he had misjudged how a veto would read to ordinary voters. Jackson turned the veto into a campaign about whether a chartered monopoly should outrank an elected president, and that is the argument he won.

Where the money went.

USH1 1384 Pet Banks

In eighteen thirty-three the president removed the federal deposits from the national bank and placed them in state banks, institutions his opponents called pet banks, chosen for political loyalty. Biddle retaliated by restricting loans and reducing the money supply, which turned a political fight into a credit contraction.

Four entries on the consequences, including a party that named itself after the Revolution.

The order that broke it.

USH1 1385 The Specie Circular

Jackson issued an executive order requiring that western land sales be conducted using gold or silver only, a measure aimed at speculation in western land. It proved disastrous when the Bank of England cut back loans to America, draining domestic gold and silver reserves and making hard currency scarce.

The crash.

USH1 1386 The Panic of 1837

The Panic of eighteen thirty-seven was caused by the Specie Circular, the Bank of England's reduced lending, and collapsing cotton prices together — three causes, only one of them American policy. Van Buren, elected in eighteen thirty-six, paid the political price for the consequences of Jackson's policies.

The party that formed against all this.

USH1 1387 The Whig Party

The Whig Party formed in eighteen thirty-four out of opposition to the bank veto and the Specie Circular, with opponents calling Jackson King Andrew the First and taking the Whig name from the party that resisted George the Third. Whigs championed active federal government, internal improvements and a national bank, which is Clay's American System under a party label.

A court decision the corporations relied on.

USH1 1388 Dartmouth College v. Woodward

In eighteen nineteen the Supreme Court upheld the rights of private corporations, denying New Hampshire's attempt to reorganise Dartmouth College, so a corporate charter was held to be beyond a state legislature's reach. This entry rests on one witness rather than the anchor, which does not carry the case, and the related commerce decisions are recorded in this course as an open gap.

Four entries on Removal, and the last of them settles a question students almost always ask.

The Act.

USH1 1389 The Indian Removal Act

The Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty required the relocation of southeastern nations westward to present-day Oklahoma, with Jackson presenting himself as a champion of opening land for White settlement. His stated aim was moving native inhabitants beyond the boundaries of what he called American civilisation.

How he described it to Congress.

USH1 1390 Jackson's Benevolent Policy

Jackson told Congress in December eighteen thirty that it gave him pleasure to announce that the benevolent policy of the Government was approaching a happy consummation — a removal programme described as thirty years of steady benevolence. Read the vocabulary as evidence. The language of benevolence is doing the work of justification here.

Who was removed.

USH1 1391 The Five Civilized Tribes

The Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole and Cherokee were so designated because they had largely adopted Anglo-American culture, speaking English and practising Christianity, and many of them held enslaved people exactly as their White neighbours did. Despite that adaptation, White Americans still rejected them as potential fellow citizens.

What that rejection reveals.

USH1 1392 Assimilation Was Not the Point

The condition placed on Native nations was that they adopt Anglo-American ways. The Cherokee did so more completely than any other nation. They spoke English, practised Christianity, farmed as their neighbours farmed, held enslaved people as their neighbours did, wrote a constitution and published a newspaper in their own alphabet. They met the stated condition and were removed anyway. This is the anchor's own point, and it settles the question. The argument was never about civilisation. It was about land, and the civilisation test was a condition offered in bad faith, because no performance of it would have been accepted. Removal followed the discovery of gold in Georgia and the pressure of cotton planters for territory, not any failure of the Cherokee to comply.

Two entries to close, and the second is the strongest material in this unit.

Their first case.

USH1 1393 Cherokee Nation v. Georgia

In eighteen thirty-one the Cherokee sued, represented by former attorney general William Wirt, arguing they constituted an independent foreign nation, and requesting an injunction to stop Georgia laws aimed at eradicating them. The Court held the Cherokee did not meet the criteria for foreign-nation status, so it declined to hear the case on those grounds.

And the case they won.

USH1 1394 Worcester v. Georgia

Samuel Worcester was a Christian missionary and the federal postmaster at New Echota. He broke a Georgia law by living on Cherokee land without state authorisation, lost his federal position, was arrested, and was sentenced to four years' hard labour. He appealed, and in eighteen thirty-two Chief Justice John Marshall ruled for him. The Cherokee Nation, Marshall held, is a distinct community occupying its own territory, with boundaries accurately described, in which the laws of Georgia can have no force. Georgia's actions were repugnant to the Constitution, laws and treaties of the United States. The Cherokee had asked a federal court to hold a state to a federal treaty, and the highest court in the country agreed with them. Then enforcement proved impossible, and that is the entire lesson. A constitutional holding is not self-executing. The Court had no army, the president who did have one had staked his presidency on removal, and the ruling changed nothing on the ground. Six years later the army evicted the Cherokee anyway. Note also what Marshall did not say. He did not hold the Cherokee a foreign nation, having refused that the year before. He held them a distinct community under federal protection, which is a narrower ruling and a more durable one, and it remains the foundation of federal Indian law today.

Look at what you can now do. You can explain why the compromise tariff of eighteen thirty-two failed: the concession came before any state had acted and settled nothing, which tells you the grievance was never the rate. You can state what the Force Bill left unsettled, because neither side tested it, and you can say that eight thousand South Carolinians stood ready to fight their own state. You can explain Clay's miscalculation: he forced an early re-charter four years before it was needed, expecting a veto to destroy Jackson, and the veto elected him instead. You can say why the Cherokee were removed although they met every condition set for them, which is that the condition was never the point and the land was. And you can explain Worcester: the Cherokee won, and the ruling changed nothing, because a constitutional holding is not self-executing.