Warning: Undefined variable $num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 126
Warning: Undefined variable $posts_num in /home/shroutdo/public_html/courses/wp-content/plugins/single-categories/single_categories.php on line 127
Beginning with the Nullification Crises, the Tariff of 1828, and the Bank War, Wilentz illustrates the growing internal rifts within the Democratic Party, especially between Andrew Jackson and his Vice President, John C. Calhoun. United opposition against Jackson resulted in the emergence of the Whig Party, which would eventually overtake the Democratic Party in the election of 1840.
Chris argues in his post, “This idea of inherited guilt attempts to relieve Van Buren of blame, even though the panic of 1837 happened directly under Van Buren’s leadership.” I do not necessarily agree with this statement, for Wilentz is right in that Jackson’s Specie Circular led to the financial crash of 1837, just as Martin Van Buren happened to take office. The requirement of gold or silver payments to purchase federal land resulted in the loss of millions of dollars worth of paper money; land sales called for a shift to hard money that speculators just did not have. “The largest New York City banks lost more than ten million dollars in federal deposits and saw their specie reserves drop from 5.9 million dollars in August 1835 to 1.5 million dollars by May 1837” (Wilentz 231). Similar to the way George Bush left President Obama to deal with immense financial issues exacerbated by Bush’s presidency, I believe Wilentz is correct in characterizing the Panic of 1837 as Van Buren’s inherited dilemma from Jackson’s presidency.
Martin Van Buren’s attempt to compromise and gain supporters ultimately backfired as it further fueled the antislavery movement. Calhoun returning to the Democratic Party had pressured Van Buren into appeasing him and the proslavery southern Democrats. To the antislavery northern Whigs and abolitionists, Martin Van Buren appeared to be an advocate of slavery, something he was trying to avoid the entire time. His willingness to support slave-owners presents a contradictory image of Democracy as the party of the common farmer, yet that still defends the interests of the wealthy slave-owners. “Van Buren’s and the Democrats’ political difficulties exposed, once again, the deepening contradictions and dilemmas of Jacksonian egalitarianism” (252). This brings us back to the political debate over not only racial divisions, but also over socioeconomic divisions fueling the abolitionist movement.