Jacksonian Democracy – U.S. to 1877

December 9, 2013

Course Reflection

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I definitely liked this course more than I thought that I would, and I learned a lot of new material that I hadn’t learned in APUSH.

With that being said, I really think that the role of the white elites in US History set up the rest of the country’s history as a whole. Before the revolution, the white elites wanted to be equal to the elites of the Brits. When that didn’t happen, they fought for what they thought that they deserved. In the early years of the new nation, the government was trying to figure out how to represent its people to set up national success. Luckily, for the common man, the Bill of Rights slipped into the new constitution, and the people felt like they had a say in how their government was run. The question of ‘who do we serve?’ as a government, though was still unanswered. Does the government only serve the elites, or does it serve everyone? Andrew Jackson was the first person to vehemently agree with the latter, and he won the support of the people. As crazy as he may have been, he spoke on behalf of the ‘common man’ and gave the people a sense of citizens’ rights. This idea was the beginning of a sliding slope that eventually led to greater male suffrage, emancipation of slaves, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and greater equality that we have today. This may never have taken place, or it could have taken a completely different course if the rights of the common man as described through his politics by SYSTRAUSS weren’t, at least in theory, promoted by Jackson. Jackson forever changed the course of American History because of his brand new style of politics.

November 13, 2013

The Anti-Climactic Flip-Flop

Chris Masone
His 141
Blog Post

In our discussion in class on Tuesday, we raised the point that when President Harrison died in office a month after his inaugural address, both parties were seemingly in shock and, for a moment, the country experienced a brief constitutional crisis over presidential succession. Even more surprising, in the Whig moment of triumph after defeating incumbent Martin Van Buren, the party suddenly collapsed. To add insult to injury, Harrison’s vice president, John Tyler, suddenly turned against the Whigs and vetoed Clay’s bank bill along with other Whig-backed measures. The political climate, much to the joy of the Jacksonian Democrats, had abruptly flipped and now the Whigs were once again struggling to maintain power. Even though the Whig party was in shambles, the democrats had not yet fully recovered from Van Buren’s defeat. Rather, they may have been worse off than before due to new divisions over banking, internal improvements, and the complicated issues of slavery and interpreting the constitution. The Democratic Party was split into multiple sub-parties, like the Hunkers, the Locofocos, the Barnburners, the loyal Jacksonians, and most surprisingly the Democratic Calhounites.

Although I discussed briefly John C. Calhoun in my last blog post, I would like to revisit him because of his interesting career and his strong platform. Because he hated Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy Calhoun did not know which party to conform to. While the Whig party was anti-Jackson and pro-banking, Calhoun chose against running for president in 1824 under the Whig ticket. After the flip-flop after Harrison’s death, Calhoun switched sides and sided with the democrats. As Wilentz describes on page 279, “The most surprising development within the Democracy was a growing enthusiasm, among some of the most radical northeastern hard-money advocates, for, of all people, John C. Calhoun.” As Sarah put it, “specifically [Wilentz’s] vilification of John C. Calhoun,” is interesting to note because, “It is clear that Calhoun was not Wilentz’s ideal political representative.” Just from Wilentz’s diction, it is obvious that he was surprised at Calhoun’s sudden support from radical democrats. Wilentz’s bias against Calhoun from the last section bleeds into this chapter, as Sarah noted. I think that Wilentz’s, as I would put it, political favoritism shows as he clearly does not like the idea of Calhoun running for the Democrats after attacking previous democratic presidents like Jackson and Van Buren.

Wilentz’s bias makes it difficult to take an objective view of Calhoun in chapters 17 and 18. His account of Calhoun’s ideas and policies feels sardonic, for example on page 280, “Calhoun’s brilliant essential perception- that in modern societies, aggregations of whole interests and classes, and not individuals, had become the basic unites of politics- was offset by his favoring some interests over others.” In this quote, he seems to be patronizing the ideas in Calhoun’s summary view of politics, “Disquisition on Government.” Wilentz seems angry that the deepening divisions among the various sub-parties of the Democracy were complicating the chances of a clear democratic candidate for the next presidential election.

As a side note, Wilentz introduces the Dorr War in the same chapter. After discussing what happened with Thomas Dorr and Rhode Island’s government under the colonial charter of 1663, Wilentz concludes “the Dorr War was an exceptional case in the history of American democratization before the Civil War.” I believe the juxtaposition of the Dorr War with the fragmentation of the Democratic Party into sub-parties like the democratic Calhounites in this chapter could be an attack on the Whig Party. I believe that Wilentz attempts to argue that because of the Whig’s interference with Jacksonian Democracy, the Whigs were eventually responsible, or at least played a large role in, the civil war.

November 11, 2013

Political Power and the People

Jackson ran on a platform of populism. Being from the west and making his own success, as opposed to the eastern elites who traditionally won the presidency, he appeared to be the common man’s man. However, as Jackson himself learned, it was impossible to satisfy every common man in a country so large as the United States. Eventually the president has to take sides and, in the process alienate some of the common people he claimed to support. During his second presidency, Jackson seemed to have given up on attempting to appease the majority and instead stood firmly in support of his own ideas whether many people were in support of them or not. This was clearly demonstrated by his determination to experiment in hard money economics, a policy which created a lot of conflict throughout the country.

I agree with Sylvia’s point that one of the legacies of Jacksonian Democracy was its role in the development of the Whig party and populism at large (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/a-party-for-the-people/). The contrasting way in which Wilentz presented the Democratic Party and the Whig party during this time period was very interesting. Under Jackson and Van Buren, the Democratic party’s policies were mainly shaped by economic concerns such as the battle over the national bank and the experimentation in hard money policy. There was also some concern over slavery, however Wilentz emphasized the influence of economics during this time more. The Whig party that rose in opposition to Jacksonians, on the other hand, was driven mainly by a very Christian humanitarian way of thinking. The Whigs’ focus on improving the individual through institutions such as schools and insane asylums seems to sharply contrast the way in which the Jacksonians approached politics. Perhaps, Wilentz presented these two parties as being so different in order to emphasize the degree of change American politics went through during this time period as more and more people turned toward the political process as a way to elicit change.

November 6, 2013

An Era of Uncertainty

With brand new political ideologies coming out of the rise of Jacksonian democracy, the federal government was once again left with many questions about what it could and could not do. As the new political era began, many different issues gained importance during Jackson’s second term. The federal government had to decide first, whether or not it had the power to issue a second state bank, and second, to decide whether or not it wanted to issue a second state bank; disagreement led to economic hardship for the country as a whole, and the recession led to a rise in worker’s unions. The rise in union participation gave way to a new political force. Finally, the abolition movement continued to grow to the point where it greatly affected politics in the north while increasing sectionalism.

I agree with MASPEED that the economic section (as well as the political/union section) was hard to understand, but I think that Wilentz’s main point is that Jackson had to deal with many issues in his second term, and when he dealt with them, he greatly increased federal and executive power. With many differing opinions about the magnanimous issues of economics, labor, and slavery, political parties became more fragmented. If the Jacksonians and anti-Jacksonians were more established, or if the first party system of the United States was still in tact, I think that the federal government may have been more capable in dealing with the issues. Because Jackson’s supporters’ opinions varied between the three major issues, he did not know how to lead one party, and Jackson’s weak followers led to him making controversial executive decisions in trying to appease different supporters while upholding his own values.

Perhaps the greatest issue of the 1830s was the abolitionist movement and attitudes toward slavery. Not only did people argue about whether or not slavery should be abolished, but they also argued about how it should be abolished (e.g. gradual vs immediate). Abolitionists appealed to both selfish and selfless ambitions in order to try to grow their movement. In the lead up to the Civil War, the abolitionists tried to throw many blows to the Southern pro-slavery advocates, and the South counterpunched right back, but when the time came to solve the issue once and for all, the only ammunition (no pun intended) that the Southern states had was to secede from the Union.